


From Fire by Fire

by AlliSnow



Series: Indebted [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Child Abuse, Children, Complete, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mind Control, Near Future, POV: Clint Barton, POV: Natasha Romanov, Relationship Issues, SHIELD, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-03 08:21:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 101,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlliSnow/pseuds/AlliSnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/503738/chapters/885292">White Blank Page</a>. After returning to New York - and their lives as Avengers - the return of Sloane Fisher leads to more than Natasha and Clint bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

** PART ONE **

 

_“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”_

_\- T.S. Eliot_

 (After)

I am twenty-nine.

By the time I find him, he’s an old man. ‘Old’ is relative, of course; he is only in his sixties, and they say that sixty is the new forty, but the years have been no kinder to him than he has been to the world. With his scarred face and cold gray eyes he was never a handsome figure; now, bloated by drink and hard drugs, deflated by his own soul-sapping perversion, lined and bent with self-inflicted misery, he appears a caricature of himself, bearing little resemblance to the man I remember.

He sits in a moth-eaten parlor in a Prague apartment, dressed in a ratty bathrobe, mangy carpet slippers on his feet. He faces the window as though contemplating the flat grey sky, but the way he raises his head when I enter, the way he asks in a quavering old-man voice, “Eliska, are you back?” tells me that my information is correct.

Maybe if those other girls could see him now – blind, desiccated, surrounded by the dusty evidence of indigence and privation – maybe they would be able to sleep a little more soundly.

“I told Eliska to take the rest of the day off,” I say in English, stepping further into the room. “Nice woman, although she hasn’t exactly been working her fingers to the bone, has she? This place is a dump.”

He is silent. His marred, sagging face betrays no emotion.

“She was a bit of a surprise,” I continue. “I didn’t think Eliska was really your type. From what I recall, you used to like them a lot younger.”

I count the time – seven measured heartbeats – before the Mad Russian’s stoicism cracks, tremulous lips curving into a bitter smile. “Who sent you?” he asks, slipping back into his native tongue.

“No one sent me,” I tell him in the same language, with the same deliberate tone. Through the window I see a flock of kestrels launch themselves into hasty flight, perhaps startled by a predator on the ground. They dip and wheel before spiraling out of sight.

The old man makes a coarse, barking sound; an attempt at laughter from one sorely out of practice. “So you are one of _them_ , then. Have you come to bring me to _justice_?” He says the final word like an epithet, with something beyond scorn, beyond mockery.

“The law could do little to you that you haven’t done to yourself.” It would have been far more satisfying to find him hale and healthy, surrounded by every luxury, every indulgence. It would have soothed my soul to be able to take that away from him. “The Czechs haven’t executed anyone in almost four decades.”

The old man sniffs disdainfully. “Capital punishment. _Barbaric_.”

Thinking of Sasha, thinking of my own little girl, makes the decision easy. Easier than it should be.

I lift my arm, squeeze my fist. The two darts are small but keen; they penetrate the loose skin beneath his jaw with a nearly inaudible snap. The Mad Russian’s death is quick, quiet, bloodless… and disappointing.

I yearn for the splash of crimson across the dingy draperies and stained upholstery, for the sharp report of supersonic lead, for the stench and curl of gunpowder smoke. I want him to die as my parents died. I want to leave nothing behind but ash.

I don’t set a match to the corpse, however, partly because the building is home to at least sixteen other people, innocent people who don’t deserve to have their apartments burned to the ground, but also partly because fire spooks me. The power of it. The unflinching ferocity.

Instead I leave the body, as sightless and withered as it had been at my arrival, although slightly less alive.

 

(Before: 1993)

_Summer in Bangalore puts Mary Charlotte Morgan in mind of Hell._

_To most of the city’s nine million inhabitants Hell is Naraka, realm of Yama, the blue-skinned, rod-and-noose wielding god of Death._

_Mary Charlotte has done her research. She knows that in early texts Naraka is simply a dark and bottomless pit. Later on, after Hinduism gained a little color and depth, it became a blanket term for twenty-eight distinct hells, each constructed for the punishment of twenty-eight types of sinners; the covetous, the heretical, the licentious and others are awaited by their own proscribed tortures. In Naraka there are beatings and blindings, crushings and stabbings, all wildly inventive and unequivocally grotesque._

_In Bangalore there is only the heat._

_Mary Charlotte walks through the largest of the slum districts, armed only with the modesty of her dress and the goodness of her past works. The few English-speakers call her “sister”; she smiles and promises to visit them in their little huts and hovels at a more opportune time._

_At the moment, she is on a mission._

_Prakash’s message takes her into the heart of Lakshman Rau Nagar. The people here are absorbed in their own duties: the hanging of laundry, the painting of fences, the solicitation of tech and flash and flesh. A young man fixes a bicycle. A swarm of urchins kick a faded soccer ball from one narrow alley to the next. Broken bottles and plastic sheeting lay half-submerged in a muddy ditch where two young women in colorful shawls scoop water into buckets._

_At the appointed intersection she spots Prakesh, leaning against a tumbledown building and pretending to read a newspaper. He is not wearing his policeman’s uniform, which would have unnerved the neighborhood and sent Mary Charlotte’s quarry, in particular, back into flight, but it is still obvious that he does not belong here._

_He looks up as she approaches, folding his paper and giving her a shy smile. Mary Charlotte, slim and winsome and not yet twenty-seven, has suspected for some time that Prakesh is a bit infatuated with her, despite what he knows about her spiritual vocation. Or, at least, what he believes he knows. Mercifully he does not attempt to engage in small talk or uncomfortable compliments, merely nods across the street. “That’s her, then?”_

_The girl sits in the doorway of an abandoned building. An eviction notice is taped to a dirty window, but this was not the girl’s home. She is not a native of Lakshman in particular or Bangalore in general, only an orphaned waif, a runaway from a suburb seventy kilometers to the east._

_She is thin and filthy, but underneath the patina of grime Mary Charlotte can still see evidence of the fire. Her black hair is short and snarled in places where the flames singed it, and her cheeks are smudged with soot stains. This child could be one of a million other foundlings, dirty and desolate, except that Mary Charlotte never forgets a face._

_“Yes,” she says. “Well done. Have you spoken to her?”_

_“I tried,” says Prakesh wryly. His English is inflected but otherwise impeccable. “Asked for directions. Thought that would be innocent enough. She told me to… well, it’s not fit for your ears, Sister. I thought I’d frightened her away, but she just keeps sitting there, not even looking at me… not looking at anything, really. It’s like she’s waiting for something.”_

She is, _thinks Mary Charlotte._ She’s identified you as one breed of pervert or another, and she’s waiting for you to make the first move. She’s decided that it is better to keep a dangerous man in plain sight, out in the open street, rather than retreat into the dubious safety of Lakshman’s shadowed veins and arteries. She may be only seven, untutored, illiterate, but she is extraordinary.

_Mary Charlotte leaves Prakesh with a smile and a brief touch on his arm – let him make of both what he will – and approaches the girl. The urchin looks up, suspicious but not alarmed. No doubt she has pegged Mary Charlotte as a colleague – perhaps an employee – of the deviant with the newspaper, sent to cozen her, to tempt her, to draw her away into some dark space between leaning buildings where bodies are too often dragged out in vinyl bags by harried municipal workers._

_“Hello, Devi,” says Mary Charlotte, slipping into Kannada, the dominant language of this southern state._

_The girl’s suspicion grows, although she doesn’t respond to the name or even confirm its accuracy. She is canny. She is shrewd. There is a welt below her right eye, several days old, surrounded by a yellowish-green halo of a bruise._

_“I’ve been looking for you for almost a week now,” Mary Charlotte continues, kneeling down in front of the girl’s stoop, ignoring the way the heels of her shoes squelch in the mud and refuse. “I had no idea you would make it so far on your own. I was afraid something terrible had happened to you. You haven’t been hurt, have you?”_

_Devi’s lips curl. “Why do you care? Why are you looking for me?”_

_“Because I saw what you did. I saw the fire.”_

_The girl’s face pales, the bruise becoming more livid, the smudges of soot and filth more pronounced. For a moment she trembles on the edge of tears, looking like the defenseless child that she is, and then some font of strength wells up inside her and she sets her delicate jaw. “Is that why he’s here?” she asks brashly, nodding at Prakesh without taking her eyes off Mary Charlotte. “To arrest me?”_

_Mary Charlotte suppresses a smile. “No, Devi. He’s my friend. He’s been helping me look for you.” In reality, Prakesh is only the last in a long line of spies and informants that managed to track the girl from Kolar. “My name is Mary Charlotte Morgan. I have a house in the city proper… a place where girls like you can be safe.”_

_“And you want to take me there?”_

_“I do.”_

_“Is it a brothel?”_

_Mary Charlotte is now compelled to smile at the girl’s boldness. “No, my dear. I have not been placed on this Earth to commit such atrocities, or to allow them to be committed in my name. My house is a place of scholarship. Learning. There are other girls there. Girls who have no one else.”_

_Devi hugs her knees to her chest, her eyes as dark as smoke. “What about them?” she asks after a moment of thoughtful silence, nodding as the traveling soccer game moves back down the main street, and Mary Charlotte realizes that many of the players are female. “Why don’t you want them, too?”_

_The girl does not want a lecture on the limited resources available to a lone woman, or the logistics involved in rounding up herds of children to be schooled whether they like it or not. She is commenting, really, on the fundamental unfairness of life, and Mary Charlotte has no answer for her. All she has is the truth. “I want you,” she tells Devi Namasri, “because I have been put on this Earth with a gift. I can tell when somebody is meant for great things. I can tell when they are special. And you, my dear… you are very special indeed.”_

 

(Before: 2012)

_Being an international jet-setter, Stark is ready to jump back on the jet and set off for New York City as soon as dinner is over – which is to say, after he’s sampled an obscene number of desserts and put away another half-bottle of wine._

_Thor - who is responsible for the other half, as well as a stack of empty plates, a small pile of bent cutlery, and the head chef’s state of high dudgeon after being informed that one of his customers was requesting something called “Pop-Tarts” – seems open to this plan of action. Having traveled to Frankfurt under his own power (he’d still been in the American southwest with Jane Foster when Stark and the others left from New York) he’s looking forward to flying in the Gulfstream the same way an elderly train enthusiast might anticipate an afternoon spent touring a park on a miniature steam locomotive._

_Rogers is the first to demur, saving both Clint and Natasha the trouble. “It’s late,” he says, rolling his broad shoulders as he glances at his watch. “By the time we get back to New York it’ll still be the middle of the night. Unless you’ve got somewhere to be in the next twelve hours, I think it makes more sense to head back in the morning.”_

_Stark grunts tacit acknowledgement and mutters something covetous about SHIELD’s speedy Quinjets, looking a little put-out, but when Banner compliments Rogers’ logic, and Thor muses aloud that it would be “gratifying” to visit his old Nordic stomping grounds while he’s in the neighborhood, Stark gives in with good grace, contenting himself with caustic comments regarding Oslo and its environs._

_He makes a call, books some rooms for himself, Rogers and Banner at the Hotel Gravenbruch, and they plan to rendezvous at the airfield at noon, which is apparently the billionaire’s version of ‘getting an early start.’_

_Once again there are handshakes all around – they all politely decline another hug from Thor and are rewarded with a series of vigorous back-slaps instead – and then they depart through the front of the restaurant. The customers still lingering in the front room are oddly quiet and watchful as the six of them make their exit, but at least nobody whips out a camera phone._

_*_

_Stark offers them a ride back to the apartment, Thor makes a comment about ‘nighttime revelry in the streets’ and Rogers, apparently forgetting everything he knows about the two of them in the interest of being a mother hen, warns against the possibility of ‘hooligans’ causing trouble so late at night._

_In the end, however, Natasha and Clint walk back alone through Frankfurt’s lamp-lit avenues, encountering some revelers but very little in the way of hooliganism. Her right hand bumps once against his left, and then again, and when he curls his fingers around hers she makes no attempt to pull away. It’s a moment of weakness on his part, perhaps, or a moment of softness on hers, or maybe a bit of both._

_*_

_The moment the door to the apartment closes, she pushes him against it. Not with enough force to hurt, really, just enough to rattle the door in its frame, just enough to make the puritanical middle-aged couple across the hall to shake their heads disapprovingly, just enough to send Clint’s hormone levels, which had previously been on a low simmer, into a stratospheric spike._

_The door’s decorative molding digs hard into the small of his back and shoulder blades, but then Natasha steps in towards him, a wordless intensity in her eyes that heretofore he has seen reserved for men about to sustain serious injury, and suddenly he can’t tell if he’s leaning against a feather mattress or a bed of nails. Their lips meet with sudden urgency; her arms wind around his neck. Every sense is close to overload with the realness and warmth of her, with the cool silk blouse beneath his fingers, with the firm press of her breasts against his chest, with the soft scrape of teeth against his bottom lip._

_His hands drift down, finding the slits in her knee-length skirt, slipping underneath and then up, circumnavigating her hips on a quest for the hem of her panties._

_He finds only skin._

_Her lips curve almost imperceptibly against his and a sound escapes his throat, a sound that is barely identifiable as human, long and low and wordless. It’s just as well. If he’d been able to talk he would have found himself saying something stupid, like_ you’re amazing _(obvious), or_ I love you _(because that went over like a lead balloon the first time) or even just_ why didn’t you tell me you weren’t wearing anything under that skirt? _(when it’s obvious that, had she said something, dinner would have been a hell of a lot shorter.)_

_He’s thinking very seriously about pulling up that skirt and seeing how she likes being pushed up against the door, neighbors be damned, but she anticipates him. She steps back and he follows, with no greater thought than to remain in contact with those fantastic lips, realizing belatedly that one of her hands is still fisted in his shirt. She half-leads, half-drags him across the small foyer, into the living room; Clint thinks that she’s heading for the sofa, which has been the setting for many happy memories this past week, but instead she pushes him down into the red suede-upholstered club chair and climbs on top of him._

_Well okay. This works too._

_The seat of the chair is easily wide enough to accommodate the both of them like this, with her knees on either side of his hips, and the back is low enough that she can brace her arms behind his head as they kiss. And for a while kissing is all they do, although it’s a slow, deep, smoldering, thoroughly dirty kind of kissing that calls every square centimeter of their mouths into play, that leaves them both gasping and groaning with the desire for more._

_And all the while, what small amount of Clint’s brain remains capable of higher functions keeps thinking. About the way she let him take her hand. About her distantness the night they learned of Fisher and Manesh’s escape. Despite all the complications in their lives – all the complications that are their lives – they’ve pretended to live in some charmed bubble for the past week, in a place where the world can’t hurt them and they can’t hurt each other. _

_They knew it was going to change eventually. They weren’t ever going to settle down in this city, get normal jobs and become normal people. Normal isn’t something that exists for people like them. But the thing about living in a bubble… well, it’s a little like those old cartoons, when the cat or the coyote or the huntsman strays unknowingly off a precipice but doesn’t actually fall until he realizes there’s no solid ground beneath his feet, as though physics is a function of perception. They’ve been suspended in midair, and they’ve only just looked down. They’re not falling, not yet, but gravity tugs on their limbs, anxious to assert itself._

_It feels like everything is about to change forever, and it isn’t fair because everything already changed forever seven days ago._

_He buries his hands in her hair, that freshly-red riot of curls, kisses her until he’s dizzy, until little spots begin to dance behind his closed eyelids.  She responds by moving in his lap, rolling her hips as her own hands leave the chair behind his head, drifting across his jaw, his collarbone, ghosting against his chest and stomach until they reach the fastenings of his slacks. Now he has no chance of breathing whatsoever, but fine, whatever, breathing seems pretty optional at this point._

_Natasha straightens and pulls her blouse over her head. Her hands return to his fly as he fumbles with the closure on her bra, which is as complicated as a sailor’s most difficult knot, and then the straps are falling off her shoulders, shimmying down her arms, and the offending item goes the way of the blouse._

_He reacquaints himself with every bit of exposed flesh, with his fingers, his lips, his tongue, his teeth, and her hands are busy as well, working beneath the flared fabric of her skirt and the pleats of his pants. He tries to turn each kiss, each caress, into a promise. Not a promise for forever, because he isn’t sure what forever means, but for tomorrow. And the tomorrow after that, and the next one too, as long as she wants it, as long as she’ll let him._

_She shivers, either from the cool air on her skin or from some psychic sense of his heavy thoughts. “Now, Clint,” she gasps, her voice high and strained, and when the woman says now she means now because before he can even begin to suggest they take this to the bedroom – he is fully dressed, after all, save for in one particular area – she goes up on her knees, inches further up his body, and sinks down on him in one smooth motion._

_Clint has a stroke. Something. Something happens. Promises are gone. Thoughts are gone. Words are replaced by sounds, and the sounds they make meld together in erotic harmony. Nothing exists except for the sight of her, the feel of her, her heat and her voice, the way she holds his eyes with her own the first time she comes, the way her lips shape soundless syllables that might as well, in that moment, be the three words she’s already warned him she may never say._

 

(1)

“See? You should have let me be involved with this from the beginning!”

“What, and deprive you of the chance to say ‘I told you so’? And why do you act like you’re the resident expert on these things? How many cross-dimensional Einstein-Rosen bridges have _you_ opened?”

If Jane Foster was ever intimidated by Tony Stark – and Natasha imagines that she was at first, because most people are – she seems pretty much over it now.

“Opened?” snarls Stark over the comm line. “None. Actually _been_ through? Oh yeah, that was me. Hey, next are you going to ask how many unholy alien swarms I’ve _personally_ unleashed on the planet? Because I think you’ve got a leg up on me there, sweetheart.”

This has been going on for the last fifteen minutes, since before their arrival in what remains of Puente Antiguo, and Thor is suspiciously silent. Either the communications device he was given is no match for his mighty eardrum, or he’s decided not to get into the middle of an argument between his girlfriend and his teammate.

_Teammate_. Natasha shakes her head and banks the modified Quinjet back towards the center of the rift.

Puente Antiguo – what’s left of it – is spread out below her. Main Street is still in charred shambles; other buildings are merely dusty from disuse, although some homes and shops bear the tale-tell signs of looting.

Many residents of this sleepy New Mexican town had fled of their own volition right after the business with Thor and the Destroyer (thereby showing more common sense than the great majority of New Yorkers, in Natasha’s estimation, who seem content to live under the shadow of Stark Tower, a.k.a. Avengers Tower, a.k.a. A Giant Bad Guy Magnet). The rest were evacuated by SHIELD in the following weeks under the pretense that the lingering effects of the Destroyer – or Mjolnir, or the portal that had brought both of them to Earth – might be hazardous to the population’s health. The official explanation, of course, had been something about a natural gas leak.

In reality, Fury hadn’t wanted thousands of civilians so close to the shiny new research base he was building on the foundations of the Mjolnir site about 50 miles away. Yeah, he was thinking about the civilians’ security… but mostly about his own.

If Natasha were to gain altitude she would be able to look towards the west and see the rim of the crater, which is even less altered than the town below. After the bodies of Loki’s first victims were pulled from the rubble, after SHIELD’s hard copies of confidential files and most valuable tech were recovered – not necessarily in that order – the site had been largely abandoned. The area is fenced off now, and the fence is plastered with warning signs bearing the name and stern device of the EPA.

Whether these signs are just a ruse, or there really is an environmental impact study being done regarding the effects of low-level gamma radiation on the grey-banded kingsnake and the Pecos springsnail, even Natasha isn’t sure. The American government can be awfully strange.

*

The rift in the sky above Puente Antiguo is small, certainly not on the scale of the portal in New York City, simply a thin silvery scar against the brilliant reds and oranges of the desert sunset. It was innocuous enough at first to entirely escape the notice of Jane and Erik Selvig, who had come here to attempt to reopen a bridge between Asgard and Earth.

SHIELD had been kept in the dark about this gambit; Jane and Selvig claimed that was because they’d had little hope it would work. Darcy Lewis, when asked, had taken a slightly different view of the whole thing: “Are you kidding? Of course we didn’t tell them. They would have swooped in here and taken all of our stuff. _Again_.” (She said this while unconsciously clutching her iPod to her chest.) “Besides, that freaky Fury guy would have had _kittens_.”

Natasha thinks that she might enjoy seeing Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, have kittens.

Whatever Jane and Selvig claim now, their attempt had been successful. Their jury-rigged bridge was able to piggyback the old path of the Bifrost and, while Thor claims it isn’t as elegant or as comfortable as the original rainbow road, it has served its purpose. What no one was expecting was that the door they opened might remain cracked, that it would swing wider as time passed, and that something else might follow him through.

Each is the size of a small sedan; they are faintly translucent, a spectrum of reds and pinks and beiges in the light of the western sun, with black eyes as round and flat as buttons if buttons were as big as hubcaps. Their bulbous bodies, laced with blue veins, are gelatinous enough to send Bill Cosby into transports of delight, but their legs and slashing mouth-parts are covered in shiny white chitin which, according to Steve, “is pretty dang sharp.”

Steve has a talent for understatement. When they’d first arrived on the scene, he’d said, “Wow, those are ugly.”

The captain is on the ground, on a stretch of road that seems to have escaped both the Destroyer’s wrath and the looters’ avarice, trying to engage one of the things without being sliced to ribbons. Despite its mass and its stubby legs it can move fast, darting in at Steve, mandibles flashing with a _snick-snick_ sound like scissoring blades.

A few blocks away, near the worst of the infestation, Bruce and Jane are hunkered down behind the van, hunched over tablets as they try to repurpose the equipment on the roof of a nearby bank – intended to analyze subatomic particles in the atmosphere – to tell them something useful about the creatures. Thor referred to them as “lice on the tree of Yggdrasil,” as though that’s supposed to _mean_ something to your average Midgardian.

“So Thor, you know what these things are?” Stark asks now, since Foster is ignoring him in favor of Banner and the computers.

“Indeed,” says Thor warily. So, nothing wrong with his communications device.

The two men are on the opposite side of town, trying to confine the space lice to the ruins of Puente Antiguo; the city of Ashmore, New Mexico is about fifteen miles to the southeast (not big, as cities go, but too big to evacuate, so SHIELD had settled for threatening the population a lot) over a small rise of dusty, scrub-covered hills.

“You get them on Asgard?”

“Occasionally.”

“Do you know how to get _rid_ of them?”

So far, nothing they’ve tried has worked. The creatures’ soft, vulnerable-looking bodies absorb anything thrown at them: directed energy, projectiles, even a downed telephone pole hurled like a javelin… all simply pass through their jelly-like physique with barely a ripple, exiting through the other side without any visible damage. The white chitin, on the other hard, appears diamond-hard, impervious to destruction.

“Well,” says Thor.

“Well? Don’t _well_ me.”

“…we have servants for that,” Thor finishes lamely.

Stark curses with fluency and imagination under his breath – of course his headset picks up every word and broadcasts it to the rest of them as clearly as if he were standing over their shoulders – choosing to ignore the fact that he grew up as much a pampered prince as Thor and would be equally flummoxed if asked to remove a colony of boll weevils from a cotton field. “Think you could run back home and _get_ one of them?”

“And risk opening the rift even wider?” This is Jane, her tone scathing.

“Hey! I’m trying to be helpful here!”

“ _Try harder_.”

Bruce interjects. “Barton, I need you to turn the largest satellite dish about… twenty degrees to the north.”

Natasha’s pulse stutters at the sound of his name and she swings the Quinjet around again, starting another pass over the bank. Clint is up there amid the nest of dishes and cables and emitters which, nearly a month ago, had located the end of the bridge (the fact that it had drifted in from the desert during the past year and a half is completely normal, Foster informed them, and to be expected, because… well, because _science_ ).

Clint is ostensibly there to cover Banner and Foster’s position at the van, despite the fact that his arrows do as little damage as Thor’s hammer and Stark’s rockets, but he’s already been called upon twice before to adjust the dish and once to read data off a monitor.

It makes Natasha nervous. He’s easy enough to miss while covering the street, camouflaged in the shadow of a blocky HVAC shed, but Jane’s equipment is out in the middle of the roof. The creatures, numbering about two dozen, have thus far remained down on the street, but there’s no reason to think those insectile legs aren’t capable of scaling a stucco façade.

_What am I doing up here?_ she wonders. _If we’re all ineffective, I might as well be ineffective with them._

But Steve had wanted eyes in the sky. And since she was the lone mere mortal whose specialties involved close-quarters combat, a tactic not specifically recommended for fighting giant protoplasmic space lice, she’d drawn the metaphoric short straw.

A slivery shimmer catches the corner of her eye and she looks up through the cockpit window, into the blood-red, bruise-purple sky. “Here comes another one.”

It trembles at the lip of the rift, grossly distended and horribly ripe, like a boil about to burst, squeezing through and simultaneously inflating itself until its translucent skin is stretched shiny-tight. It hovers there for a moment and then begins to drop towards the ground, controlling its descent as it alters its own volume, collapsing like a balloon with a slow leak until it’s no longer lighter than air, until it’s the size of a compact car instead of a Hummer. It gently touches asphalt in front of the Starbucks drive-through and skitters away between that building and an adjacent food truck.

_Lighter than air…_

Thor is still talking about the lice – _parasites, feed off rare minerals in the crust, been known to hollow out small moons and asteroids_ – and Natasha doesn’t know if there are any analogous metals drawing the creatures to this place or if they’re just taking advantage of an open door, but she speaks over Thor. “Clint…”

“Yeah. I see it.”

“See what?” Steve is starting to sound winded. “This isn’t working, fellas.”

Before Natasha can answer, Stark unleashes a volley of rockets at a cluster of lice up the street from Foster’s van. Most hit their target without effect – except for the burping sound the projectiles make as they pass out the far side of each boneless mass – but one strikes a nearby sixteen-wheeler emblazoned with a familiar logo, exploding against the cab door in a blast of black smoke.

Steve sighs heavily. He’s talked to them all about minimizing property damage.

“Well I don’t think Wal-Mart’s coming _back_ for it,” snaps Stark.

Natasha ignores both of them. She’s watching the four lice by the power line, and sure enough, the one nearest the truck seems spooked, finds its escape cut off by the bodies of its comrades, and begins to inflate its body. In two seconds its chitinous legs are barely touching the concrete; seven seconds after that it’s risen twelve feet into the sky and is clear of the smoldering trailer.

“Heads up,” says Clint.

Natasha’s too high up to see his release, or the path of his arrow, but she certainly sees its effect. One moment the creature is gently wafting over the roof of a 7-11 mini-mart, and the next there is only a brilliant blossom of fire and a fresh rain of debris in the street, most of it resembling half-melted plastic.

“ _Nice_ ,” says Stark approvingly.

“Hit ‘em while they’re in the air,” Clint continues, amusement in his voice. “They’re like little Hindenbergs.”

“I beg to differ on the ‘little’ part,” grunts Steve. “Okay, I’m in. How do we get them in the air in the first place?”

“Startle them,” says Natasha, wheeling above, counting targets. Twenty-three remain in sight, assuming more don’t join the party from the other side of the rift. “If it’s bad enough, flight will override fight.”

“Great. Any idea what scares flying space jellyfish?”

Natasha thinks. The things haven’t been impressed by what’s been thrown at them so far; Stark’s rocket was an accident – although she’d never get him to admit that – and even that only worked because the louse couldn’t get away fast enough on its feet. “Corner them,” she says. “Put something big and loud in their path, leave them no way to go but up.”

“Oh boy.” Bruce sighs resignedly. “I guess that’s me, then, isn’t it?”

 

(2)

Stark’s next words are obviously directed at Jane Foster: “Step away from the Hulk. You are too close to the Hulk.”

Foster doesn’t need to be told twice. She runs around the side of the van, jumps into the driver’s seat and peels away without a backwards look, almost broad-siding a slug-crab-thing as it scrabbles out from behind the ruins of a furniture store.

Clint hopes Banner doesn’t take it personally.

The guy is just standing there, looking small and pale and completely unenthusiastic, and then in the space of a couple of heartbeats the _other guy_ is in his place, his appearance heralded by much ripping of clothing and stomping of feet and a long, animalistic howl that freezes Clint’s blood in his veins.

Thankfully it seems to have a similar effect on the nearest slug-crab, which had turned as though to pursue Foster’s van; instead, it freezes in place and begins to swell, lifting up and into the air much more quickly than its dead buddy by the mini-mart.

“I got this one,” says Stark; Clint, bow set to string, lets him have it. The explosion is bigger this time, but the results are the same.

“Twenty-two,” says Natasha.

*

The count is down to eleven (Clint: two, Stark: four, Thor: five, all with assists by the Hulk, and Stark claims that Thor cheated on the one by the Mexican restaurant but refuses to give specifics) and they’re almost starting to enjoy themselves when Clint hears Nat’s voice in his ear again. “Uh, guys? Cavalry’s coming in from the east.”

“SHEILD already?” whines Stark, like a kid being told he can’t have a puppy.

“No, they’re still three to five minutes out. Take a look.”

Clint, still on the bank rooftop, is too low to see anything. He hears it, though: police sirens, a whole chorus of them, drawing steadily nearer.

“Hey guys,” says Stark, probably broadcasting his voice through the patrol cars’ speakers. “Iron Man here. I think we got this under control here, thanks.”

“Mr. Stark,” comes the terse reply, “this is Sheriff Morales, and you’re welcome to… whatever those things are. But we got a tip that there’re still people living in some of these buildings. We’re here to get them out before you burn the _other_ half of the town down.”

“Crap,” says Stark, and privately Clint agrees. If they’d known this place was still inhabited by anything besides tumbleweeds and rattlesnakes… well, they’re going to get the _minimize property damage_ lecture from Cap again.

Speaking of Rogers, at least this new wrinkle gives _him_ something to do besides stand around and lament his lack of explosives.

*

Natasha narrates the next few minutes as she circles above, monitoring the proceedings, and Clint listens with interest. About a dozen squatters emerge from a mostly-intact hotel at the south end of town and Rogers herds them towards the cops, trying to avoid the worst of the slug-crab fires and the wide swath of destruction the Hulk is causing as he frightens the last of the creatures into the sky.

The airspace and ground around the bank seem clear, so Clint rappels down off the faux-stucco siding and jogs across the street to the 7-11 parking lot. Here, the first _thing_ he blew up is still smoldering quietly, giving off the stench of burning rubber, propane, and something that smells strangely like curry.

A series of thuds and grunts announces the Hulk’s presence in the street about a block away; Clint tenses, considering which arrow in his quiver of tricks might afford him the best distraction, but the other guy seems to be at least somewhat in his right mind. He lumbers up the street as Natasha’s voice in Clint’s ear announces, “That should be the last of… wait. Incoming.”

Clint automatically looks skyward; the Hulk, grunting in anticipation, follows his lead. The rift is more noticeable now, shimmering against the indigo-purple twilight, but it’s difficult to spot the blob squirming its way into their dimension. Still, he trusts Natasha’s eyes better than his own.

He reaches back for the proper arrow, fits it to the string, and waits for her to tell him that his target is in range.

Her warning almost comes too late.

A jet swoops overhead, so low it seems he could reach up and touch the fuselage. It’s not Nat’s; he can tell, even in the gathering darkness, because of the SHIELD symbol painted proudly on its flank.

The _other_ cavalry is here.

The Quinjet rockets past them, the force of its wake bursting the one remaining intact window in Puente Antiguo. The Hulk makes an unhappy sound in the back of his throat and Clint concurs, watching the jet pull up hard, nose to the sky. Its pilot is risking a stall-out as trying to get a bead on the remaining creature, as though desperate to be able to assure Fury, _no, boss, the Avengers didn’t take out the threat all on their own, we helped too, honest_.

With the aircraft overhead, the hovering slug-crab – now perfectly visible, silhouetted against the Quinjet’s lights – abruptly deflates, dropping sharply away from this new, noisy threat. Squinting into the light, Clint brings the arrow back, the string just brushing his lips, before the voice of common sense (which sounds a lot like Natasha, strangely enough) points out that if he fires at a floating gasbag directly overhead it’s likely to fall on top of him.

Clint releases the string, turns to run, hopes the Hulk follows and then figures it’s okay if he doesn’t, but the pilot of the Quinjet, who doesn’t have Natasha’s voice in the back of his mind, fires. And the night lights up.


	2. Part Two

** PART TWO **

_“We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.”_

  _\- T.S. Eliot_

 

(Before: 1993)

_A week passes before Devi decides that Sister Mary Charlotte’s home in Jayanagar is not, after all, a brothel._

_A month is needed before she realizes that it is something even worse._

_*_

_It begins with the arrival of a man._

_The_ kemal ki sebhaa _– the Lotus House – is not frequented by many men. Devi assumes that this is because Sister Mary Charlotte is a Catholic nun. Devi knows little about Christians of any stripe, but somehow or another she has come to understand that nuns are, as a rule, soft-spoken white women who do not drink arrack and do not enjoy the company of men._

_There is a male tutor of physics, a funny old fellow with a bald pate and exceptionally hairy ears, and a teenaged boy who comes twice a week to tend to the yard, but even the older girls and the ones who came from homes most steeped in Western culture do not seek the attention of a mere gardener. Under Mary Charlotte’s guardianship they have come to think more highly of themselves than that, and to expect more from their futures than marriage, children, hardship, squalor and death._

_Devi realizes, many years later, that for most of the children the Lotus House was exactly what it seemed: a girls-only orphanage, albeit an exceptional one, where the boarders were treated like scholars instead of chattel, where kindness rather than cruelty was the rule, where children from desperate circumstances were brought to find peace and safety, all under the strict but benevolent direction of Mary Charlotte Morgan._

_By the fourth week Devi is as well-fed and content as she’s ever been. The bruises and welts that were the final memento of her parents have faded, and the minor burns from the fire have mostly healed._

_She has friends, more friends than she ever could have imagined having, girls as young as five and as old as twelve with beautiful names like Manisha, Roshan, Indira and Vasanti, girls who are parentless, who have nowhere else to go, who were taken in by Sister Mary Charlotte, who are survivors. Who are special._

_In a way they are also her family… the first family she has ever really known. The couple in Kolar, who thought that they deserved to be called ‘mother’ and ‘father’ simply because they had donated a little biological material, no longer count in her mind. The title of ‘family’ is not a right, it is a privilege. It is an honor._

_Devi is learning. She can already read and write Kannada; the language teachers say they will start with Hindi next, and then maybe something exotic like German or English. She can figure numbers in her head faster than all but the oldest girls. And she loves the funny little physics tutor because of the world his words open up for her; it seems, if she only knew the right formula, the proper equation, the whole universe might suddenly become explicable._

_When the new man comes, few of the other girls even take notice. Sometimes visitors will come to see them at their studies, although most of them are women who – Devi is given to understand – help Sister Mary Charlotte pay for the Lotus House, their food and clothes, and the salaries of the staff._

_This guest is dressed very nicely, in a sharp gray suit and shoes so brightly polished that they could double as mirrors, but he is not a handsome man. His face is pocked and studded by the scars of old wounds, and his eyes are cold… cold and gray and pitiless._

 

(Before: 2012)

_For a while after New York, the two of them are just trouble looking for a place to happen._

_*_

_Familiarity and a sort of emotional numbness combine to take the edge off the inevitable awkwardness that comes from dry-humping your partner of five years in a hotel kitchenette and then declining to have sex with her. That, and the fact that they’re both pretty good at denial._

_They hail a taxi at the Carlyle and give an address in a far less illustrious area of New York City; the cab driver, taking them for tourists, tries to warn them against it. Then he looks a little closer and relents._

_Their destination is a long-term parking garage in East Harlem, a three-level underground structure that reeks of urine and industrious rats. The 2005 Subaru SUV in spot 20-G isn’t much to look at, but this is a useful quality as it contains, in various hidden compartments distributed throughout its chassis, several types of weaponry (unlicensed), a variety of identifying paperwork (forged), and about twenty-thousand dollars in cold, hard cash._

_Clint has other caches in other parts of the world, as does Natasha, and a few, like this one, they keep jointly. You never know when you might need to be somewhere else – or someone else – for a while._

_They drive out of the city – or Natasha drives while Clint watches for a tail. He’s not sure who is more likely to be shadowing them, Fury or Stark, but he doesn’t want to see either of them at this point._

_Driving west, they know the call will come. It always comes, sooner or later. But in the meantime they seek space and distance and time and all those other intangibles that, usually, keep them tethered to their sanity._

 

(3)

Natasha snaps a warning and Steve looks up to see a familiar breed of aircraft skimming the rooftops, blasting away into the night.

A few seconds later an explosion brings a short-lived daylight back to the desert.

Stark lands – wringing a series of _oohs_ from the traumatized-but-not-too-traumatized group of squatters – and shakes his helmeted head in disgust as he approaches. “SHIELD,” he says, the name clearly meant as an epithet.

All of the policemen look confused, but the most senior man – the name Morales is stitched onto his uniform – is the only one bold enough to speak. “SHIELD? Isn’t that you guys?”

“We work together now and then,” says Tony, voice reverberating from behind the mask, his tone vaguely insulted. “But it’s not an exclusive relationship. And they were definitely _not_ invited to this party.”

Thor touches down on Steve’s other side, his hands full of a terrified boy in his late teens wearing a grubby sweatshirt and a striped knit cap. “Good evening, constables. Gentlemen, I found this fellow attempting to flee into the desert. I did not think that would be wise.”

The teenager twists in Thor’s easy grasp, sneakered feet swinging a few inches above the pavement as Sheriff Morales leans in. “Cameron? That you?” He laughs. “Let me guess… didn’t think anyone would be looking for a grow operation this close to the Hole?”

“Hey, man, get off my case. I got a prescription.”

Steve and Thor both glance at Stark, who shrugs and elaborates. “Pot. Marijuana. Weed. Grass. Dope. Mary Jane.”

“Mary Jane?” echoes Cameron witheringly, still dangling. He looks back at Morales. “Hey, this fool hurt my arm when he grabbed me, I think it’s broke.”

The Sheriff doesn’t quite manage to hide an eye-roll, turning back to Steve with an infinitesimal shake of his head. “We had an ambulance coming a few minutes behind us.”

“Man, you break my arm, my uncle’s a lawyer, I’m gonna own your whole busted-ass planet…”

“Young man—”

Morales reaches for his radio, jumping as a Quinjet – theirs, this time – appears overhead, hovering at a responsible altitude. The squatters, most of who appear to be about Cameron’s age, do a lot of yelling and pointing, but Steve ignores them as Natasha’s voice rings in his ear: “That’s all of them, at least until more come through, but… I’m unable to locate the Hulk or Hawkeye.”

Thor frowns and drops the teenager. “Was not Barton still in the vicinity of the bank?”

Before Steve can answer that he honestly has no idea - _but wasn’t the bank close to where that explosion was just now?_ – Morales’s radio crackles to life.

 

(4)

Using the jet, Natasha could have beaten the ambulance back to the hospital, if she’d wanted to. She could have been waiting for them in the parking lot, if she’d wanted to.

She didn’t want to.

*

She’d patched into the EMS frequency and learned almost immediately that he was alive.

_Medic Two in route. Male, forty-one, head trauma following an explosion. Vitals are stable but patient reports a loss of consciousness. Um, dispatch, by the way, we’re occupied times two, found a bystander who claims to be related to the patient. Seems uninjured but something’s going on because he’s half naked. Copy._

Briefly, sheer relief brought with it the urge to cry.

In time the urge passed.

Now she lands the Quinjet in an empty intersection and walks up the road to where Steve and the others still stand, watched in silent fascination by a bevy of uniformed police (and in not-so-silent fascination by an assortment of young men and women who certainly qualify as hooligans under Thor’s most liberal definition). Steve is alternately full of concern and reassurances, Stark is laying into the SHIELD pilot over comms, Thor is scanning the skies for further threats, and Natasha is just feeling rather numb when a young officer – Crawford, according to his little embroidered nametag – touches her lightly on the forearm to get her attention. “Miss? Would you like a ride to the hospital?”

The others offer to go with her, or in her place – Stark even stops yelling long enough to insist – and Natasha tells them all absolutely not.

She’d rather Crawford just hand her the keys to his cruiser; she dislikes being driven by others in the best circumstances, and being in a cop car – even in the passenger’s seat rather than in the back, hemmed in behind wire and plastic – puts her on edge. But she gets in and lets the young officer chauffeur her through the desert because it’s easier than knocking him down and stealing his car.

Less messy, too, and less likely to result in a lecture from Steve about civic responsibility.

*

The drive is tedious and mostly silent. Natasha is grateful. She doesn’t want conversation and she doesn’t need speed. She could have been at the hospital already, though it would have meant stranding Steve in Puente Antiguo.

She couldn’t do it. She needs time.

*

She remembers the flight to Calcutta, tasked with bringing in Bruce Banner (as a scientist, not a science project) with _Barton’s been compromised_ ringing in her head, pouring over what little information was available from the site in New Mexico.

A compromised agent, in typical parlance, is one whose position or identity has been revealed, putting them in danger of discovery by the enemy. But Clint hadn’t been undercover or even on foreign soil – he had been in the States, heading up the security team monitoring Selvig and the Tesseract – and she’d known that Coulson’s words had to mean something else, something _worse_ , something he wasn’t prepared to discuss over an unsecured line.

She’d only learned the truth on the plane, a truth that was more bizarre and more terrible than anything she might have guessed.

Natasha had needed that flight, needed that _time_ , before she could really begin to accept that the next time she saw her partner she might have to take him out. That it might be a kill-or-be-killed situation where her well-honed survival instincts wouldn’t allow her to do anything less.

Tonight she’s not worried about Clint as an enemy, but as something much more frightening.

*

She finds Bruce in the ER waiting room, wearing the tattered remnants of his jeans, a faded blue scrub top and a vaguely sheepish expression. “I’m sorry, Natasha, I know I should have gotten in touch, but when I was, you know, _myself_ again, I couldn’t find my earpiece and he was unconscious, and I flagged down the ambulance…”

Natasha shakes her head, uninterested in blame. “What happened?”

Bruce hesitates and looks around. It’s a slow night in Ashmore, New Mexico; the only other occupants of the waiting room are a drowsy octogenarian wearing too much turquoise jewelry and a young man fiddling around with his cell phone. Of course, either of them could have been planted here to listen in on their conversation and report back – to SHIELD, to the CIA, to any number of other acronyms.

Eventually Bruce shrugs. “I don’t remember a lot of specifics,” he says, lowering his voice. “When the other guy’s in charge it can be pretty … hazy. But I know another one of those things started coming through, and then a jet showed up, fired on it…”

“Fired on _it_?” Natasha interrupts. “Or fired on the ground?”

She’s not sure why it matters, what difference it makes if Clint was almost killed by negligence or intent, because what is she going to do about it either way? It _does_ matter, though. It matters a hell of a lot. She’d seen the Quinjet coming in, called out a warning, and then – for a second, maybe two – she’d frozen.

Their interaction with SHIELD has been limited since her ‘defection’, with Steve playing the role of liaison more often than not. They haven’t taken any action against her; according to Steve, they haven’t even _mentioned_ her. But she doesn’t trust them.

It would be nice to think that Sloane Fisher is a liar, that no one involved with SHIELD, at any level, bears ill will towards her and Clint. It would be nice… and it would be naïve as hell.

Now Bruce looks stricken and Natasha realizes what he must be thinking: the Quinjet crew might have been aiming for the space louse, or for Clint. Or… for the Hulk. Hawkeye and the Black Widow aren’t the only members of this little team who have enemies among the supposed good guys.

“I don’t know,” says Bruce helplessly. “There was a fireball, and I think I – _he_ got the worst of it.” He rubs absently at his cheek, where a smear of soot remains. “Then I was me again, and…”

Natasha nods, looking away. She wants to thank him (because even though she’s seen the Hulk at his worst – up close and personal, thank you very much – she also knows that he is capable of selflessness) but the words get stuck in her throat. “Where is he now?”

Bruce plucks at his scrub top. “The nurse who gave me this said they were going to take him for some tests, check for hemorrhage, spinal trauma, that kind of thing. He was awake when we got in, though,” he hurries on, maybe seeing some flicker of emotion she’d been unable to squelch. “Seemed pretty normal, I guess. I told the paramedics I was his cousin, but I don’t think they believed me.”

Natasha forces a smile. “Thank you,” she says at last, but the words come out cold and stilted, and Bruce looks like he wishes she hadn’t made the effort at all.

*

Another hour and a half passes before she’s able to see him.

At least twenty minutes of that time is spent in a battle of wills with the charge nurse, a woman with the face of an angel and the demeanor of a drill sergeant and who, while thoughtful enough to lend Bruce some clothes, categorically does _not_ believe that he is Clint’s cousin. Judging by the comprehensive look she gives Natasha (whose combat suit, even devoid of SHIELD insignia, doesn’t exactly help her blend in at a time like this) she’s either been listening to the police scanner and knows _exactly_ who they are… or she thinks they all fell off a circus train as it was passing through town.

Eventually, Bruce’s hangdog look – or a fresh wave of patients from a chain-reaction fender-bender on the highway – saps the woman’s will to resist. “He’s been moved to the step-down unit,” she says, “but visiting hours are…”

Natasha doesn’t wait to find out about visiting hours.

*

“Between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.,” says the step-down unit nurse, whose photo nametag identifies her as Kimberly Andrade. She’s pretty and petite, with the implacable tone and unruffled expression of a woman accustomed to being obeyed. “Except for family.”

Natasha had determinedly practiced saying _I’m his sister_ during the elevator ride up. She opens her mouth to repeat this lie.

“I’m his wife,” is what comes out instead.

Andrade raises her eyebrows. “Mr. Barton didn’t mention that he was married.”

“He did just take a pretty good knock to the head,” Natasha says flatly, belatedly realizing that this isn’t a proper reply for an anxious spouse. There should be fretful fidgeting, a furrowed brow… maybe even a few tears. Damn. Usually she’s a lot more on her game than this.

Andrade, obviously suspicious, nevertheless smiles. It’s a water-off-a-duck’s-back smile that probably fools a lot of people into thinking she’s on their side. “Fine,” she says, pleasantly enough. “This way. Marie,” she calls over her shoulder to another nurse at the monitoring station, “I’ll be right back.”

*

Seeing him in the hospital bed makes her stomach ache.

When she was young, in the employ of certain ruthless individuals, an injury was automatic evidence of failure because a successful mission would have been completed stealthily, silently, without confrontation. Or, if confrontation was unavoidable, it was expected that the girl in question would come out the clear victor. None of this ‘you should see the other guy’ crap.

SHIELD, by virtue of not being run by _complete_ psychopaths, takes a more balanced approach. Fury in particular appreciates stealth and silence, but he is also comfortable with phrases like _strike team_ and _overwhelming force_ , and as long as a mission is successful and the asset is alive he’s not prone to complaining.

In the service of SHIELD, Natasha has been shot and stabbed and tasered. Once she spent a few weeks on crutches when a fleeing henchman’s BMW proved more than a match for her reflexes. She’s broken bones and strained muscles, been bruised and contused and lacerated. But you should see the other guys.

Clint shares the usual slate of work-related injuries, as well as a few she hasn’t personally enjoyed (almost drowned, attacked by a hungry Rottweiler, pushed off a moving bus…). Then there are the wounds inflicted during _his_ singular childhood, some of which are directly related to the inherent dangers of the circus life and some which… aren’t.

These are the ones she’s only become acquainted with in the last month or so. He’s answered her questions as though she has a right to know, but he’s asked very few of his own.

Both of them have spent their share of time under medical care, but ever since she’s known Clint that care has been at SHIELD’s direction, and it was something she never had a reason not to trust. Even the sight of casts and splints and bloodied bandages was somehow a little less frightening because she knew it would all be properly taken care of, managed by people who knew their faces and their history, because they were valuable assets and because Coulson wouldn’t have it any other way. And it’s not that Natasha has any reason not to trust the Ashmore staff, but there’s a sense of unease crawling up the column of her spine that she can’t quite shake.

Call it paranoia. Call it experience.

Clint isn’t bloodied or bandaged; while the florescent lighting has leeched all the color from his skin, the pale yellow hospital gown giving him a jaundiced tint, he appears whole enough. The cervical collar the paramedics must have fitted him with is gone, although clear saline drips into his veins from a dangling bag, and a bevy of leads feed a muted EKG machine.

Natasha feels sick.

Andrade steps sprightly into the room and Clint’s eyes open; at once they find Natasha lingering in the doorway and he manages a tired smile. “Hey.” He looks at the nurse. “I probably should have mentioned that I’m married.”

Andrade _humphs_ her skepticism but can’t resist a smile of her own. A real smile, not one of the _you’ll do what I say and like it_ variety. Clint has a way with people when he decides it’s worth the effort. “If you were _my_ husband you’d pay for that,” says the nurse archly, “in jewelry, for every anniversary from now until we were both ninety.”

“No reason to wait,” Natasha manages. She’s attempting a light tone but just ends up sounding recently strangled. “I like rubies.”

The nurse _humphs_ again, as though in indictment of rubies, and turns on one sensibly-shod heel. She looks over her shoulder as she leaves the room, however, and her dark eyes are still thoughtfully narrowed. Natasha waits until the squeak-squeak-squeak of rubberized soles on linoleum have retreated to a safe distance before speaking. “There’s no way you’re that good.”

Clint’s heavy-lidded smile broadens. “Heard you at the nurse’s station,” he says. “Brain’s been put through a blender, but the ears still work.”

With that in mind, Natasha eases the door shut. There’s a second bed in Clint’s room; it’s empty, but a disheveled blanket and vase of flowers on a nightstand imply that its occupant is due to return.

When she turns back to Clint she finds him simply watching her. Expectantly.

“I was going to tell her I was your sister,” she explains, realizing how defensive she sounds. “I just… couldn’t say it.”

“Good,” says Clint. “I have the feeling being your big brother would be a full-time job.”

Natasha smiles tightly, crosses her arms, leans against the side of Clint’s bed and looks down at her booted feet. She decides to stick with the obvious. “They’re admitting you.”

“Mm-hmm. Overnight, they’re saying. For observation.”

The anxiety she’d been lacking at the nurse’s station comes over her now, not the jittery tearfulness she expects constitutes a ‘normal’ reaction, just a new tightness in her throat and an increasing pain in her gut. “Did the MRI show something or--”

“No,” he says quickly. “No, they say it’s just a precaution. It’s probably my fault… the doctor said I had a concussion and I might have told her that it wasn’t exactly my first.”

“Or she just wanted an excuse to put you in that gown and check out your ass,” Natasha offers, still looking at the ground, hoping levity will loosen the tightness and alleviate the pain. It doesn’t.

“That’s also a possibility,” he agrees, playing along for a moment before becoming serious again. “Is everyone else okay?”

“They’re fine.”

“The bugs?”

“Under control.”

He pauses a moment a moment before daring a third question, and the sounds of the hospital trickle in through the door: the drone of voices, the mechanized pulse of a machine, the clatter of a wheeled cart.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” he asks at last, and the soft-spoken words are more than enough to drown out every other noise.

Natasha finds her gaze drifting from the speckled blue-and-gray linoleum beneath her feet to the arm that rests atop the blanket so close to her side. She catalogs the particulars of the tubing and the syringe, reciting them as she might a calming mantra, follows the invisible path of the saline drip with her eyes, through the needle, into the vein near the crook of his elbow, traveling the course of his limb and into his heart.

Unexpectedly, she finds herself staring into his eyes.

“I can’t do this,” she says, and the pain her stomach ebbs away.

Clint gives no indication of confusion or anger or surprise… or anything, really. His poker face is superb. “Do what?” he asks, very calmly.

“Us,” she says, and she can swallow again without feeling like she’s about to gag.

He looks away, down at the needle in his arm, as though wondering what about it had held her interest for so long. “I wasn’t sure whether or not we were still an _us_.”

_That’s my fault_ , Natasha thinks, although she can’t bring herself to say the words. She’d meant to draw a line after they returned to the States, to tell him in actions and attitudes – since she was too cowardly for words – that their time together in Germany couldn’t possibly become the status quo.

It was all such a bad idea. Yes, she had been the one to come onto him in New York, after the battle, but that had been… different. It seemed inevitable that they would eventually cross this line anyway; she had been sure that they could find comfort in each other’s arms, even a semblance of normalcy compared to what they had been through, and that everything would go back to how it had been in the light of day. And even though it hadn’t gone the way she’d expected, even though he’d turned her away, eventually things _had_ become comfortable, or at least tolerable, again.

The Institute had changed all that, leading them to California and then to Frankfurt, and even in their little land of make-believe it had been a challenge sometimes, because despite every silent vow to leave their baggage at the door there was inevitably some that sneaked inside with them, issues that could never really be put down, set aside, disregarded.

There had been nightmares. Resentment. Fear. They were able to escape SHIELD for seven days, but they hadn’t been able to outrun themselves.

And then, as part of this group, this _team_ , how could it be anything but a million times more complicated? Clint didn’t seem to mind Stark’s sly comments – or Thor’s frank questions – about their sex life, but it put Natasha on edge. There was a total lack of privacy, even away from the others, because she didn’t believe for one minute that JARVIS didn’t have eyes in every nook and cranny of the Tower. And the routine they’d become accustomed to over the past five years was shot to hell: no more infiltrations, no more stake-outs, no more missions with just the two of them (or maybe a couple junior agents who knew well enough to stay out of the way and do as they were told), no more Coulson running interference from Fury, no sense of a pecking order, no precedents. Just six personalities – seven if you counted the Hulk – that were dozen different kinds of crazy, all with the confidence that they knew best and with about as much tact as a pack of rabid wolverines. Adding anything else to the mix seemed to be pushing it.

Far from stymied by her silence, Clint presses on. “So… what are you thinking? That if we’re not having sex, this kind of thing won’t hurt as much? I think we’ve pretty much tested that theory to destruction, don’t you think?”

They’ve kissed (in a Tower stairwell and in her training room, both in defiance of the cameras, plus once in the upstairs dining room when hormones briefly overrode prudence – Steve hadn’t been able to meet her eyes for a week after that) and they’ve done more than kiss (namely a pretty serious make-out session in the back row of a public theater during a matinee of an idiotic comedy), but nothing that’s gone any farther. She may not be able to go cold-turkey, but at least she can keep from backsliding completely to the point where she can’t keep her hands off him.

Despite the lack of bitterness or accusation in Clint’s voice, Natasha tries to work up a little anger, a sense of being wronged. “Is that all you care about? The sex?”

He smiles ruefully and gives a tentative shake of his head. “Sorry, Red, I’m not going to make it _that_ easy for you.”

Her cheeks warm. She can’t remember the last time she flushed, unless it was on purpose. “I wasn’t trying to…”

“Yes,” he says patiently. “You were.”

Natasha turns away, waiting for the heat to fade. Across the empty, unmade bed, through a window, she can see the small courtyard that runs between the hospital and its attendant parking structure. It’s fully dark outside now and the path is marked, not just by lampposts, but by garlands of twinkling orange lights that someone has strung between the poles in anticipation of Halloween.

“I could turn it off,” she finds herself saying. “If I really tried.”

“I know you could.”

She crosses her arms, hugs them against her body. This is the correct posture to use when you want somebody to believe you are anxious, unsure, and even now she’s not positive it isn’t an act. Words come, though, answers to the questions he hasn’t asked. “When I was younger, the other girls… we couldn’t _not_ talk, even though we weren’t supposed to. We couldn’t help but become… friends, in a way. But you always knew at the end of the day that you might never see them again. They would be sent off or they would get sick or they would just disappear and you wouldn’t even know something had happened until…” She bites her lip, bites back the rest of the sentence, fending off the memories that are her steadfast companions. “And you got used to it. Everyone was replaceable and we knew that because we were just tools, just parts in a machine.”

She holds her breath, waits for him to say what she can’t – _my life isn’t like that anymore and it’s your fault_ – but he’s either not following her train of thought or he’s as frightened of the truth as she is. All he says is “ _Solnyshk_ …” in a murmur that tears at her heart.

She forces herself to turn, finds him watching her through eyes that seem more deeply shadowed than before. She wants to climb into that bed next to him, her head against his shoulder, molding her body to his as though she can transfer her strength to him through simple touch. She also wants to run from the room, down the hallway, the stairs – skip the elevator – and out into the desert night. “If Loki had… if you had died…”

“You would have been okay.”

“I would have kept going. That’s not the same thing.”

She steps back to the side of his bed, leans against it. He lays his unfettered hand over hers and she lets him, expecting his fingers to be cold, pleasantly surprised at their familiar warmth. “So where does that leave us?” he asks wearily. “Because… nothing’s changed for me, Nat. Nothing’s _going_ to change.”

Fighting the urge to pull her hand free, she shakes her head. “You can’t know that.”

His thumb traces circles on the back of her hand and she thinks that this is what she’d miss, even more than she’s missed the sex: the honest, tactile ease they have with each other now, the casual offers and acceptance of touch, and the boldness to ask those difficult questions without fear of giving offense. The latter has been an element of their partnership for years – it’s why they’ve _been_ partners for years – but it’s different now… broader and deeper and keener than a bone-deep cut.

“Come on,” says Clint, smiling a little. “What do you think you could possibly do to me that would make me stop…”

His voice fades away mid-sentence; the word that he tries not to say lingers on the air but remains unspoken, and she’s grateful. Not that she dislikes hearing him say it. She likes it. She likes it too much, which is part of the problem.

“That’s not a dare, by the way,” he adds, awkwardly.

A sudden rumbling reverberates through the hospital’s roof and walls; lights much brighter than street lamps and Halloween garlands flare just outside. Natasha pulls her hand free, walks to the window and sees what she’s been expecting: the Avengers’ modified Quinjet landing in the center of the courtyard.

“I think your ride’s here,” says Clint heavily.

She looks back at him, sees a man who is tired and wan, head aching, IV’d and EKG’d. “I’m not… I’m not leaving,” she tells him, even though it’s the thing she wants most in the world.

“Yes you are,” he says quietly, because he knows. “You need some time to yourself. To think.” He closes his eyes. “Maybe we both do.”

*

The Quinjet has yet to draw a crowd, but there are enough noses pressed to the windows on this side of the hospital that Natasha figures it won’t be long.

She walks across the courtyard, Bruce at her heels. The back hatch is down and Stark, dressed in a t-shirt and khakis, leans against the opening with crossed arms. Steve, still in uniform, is up in the cockpit.

“Where’s Thor?” Natasha asks brusquely.

Stark jerks a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of Puente Antiguo. “Stayed in town in case any more uglies decide to come through. Now that we know how to beat them, it should be a one-demigod job. Plus Foster’s still working on how to close the rift,” he adds, a trifle smugly. “I bet Cap I could fly back to the Tower, figure it out, and be back _here_ before she’s even…” He looks from Natasha to Bruce and back again, realization pushing up through the self-absorbed bluster. “Where’s Barton?”

“They want to keep him overnight. As a precaution.”

Stark raises his eyebrows, arms falling to his sides. “So… you’re staying, right?”

Natasha walks past him, up the ramp and into the hold. She doesn’t feel up to another sparring match with Tony Stark, but she’s not sure how she’s going to be able to avoid this one. “It’s just a concussion. They want to watch him overnight, but he’s going to be fine.”

“You’re leaving,” says Stark incredulously, turning to watch her. Steve stands and moves closer, frowning.

Bruce, wisely, remains just outside. “I think I’m going to stay anyway. Doctor Foster might need help and…” He scratches absently at the neck of his borrowed top. “Honestly, I’m still feeling kind of responsible…”

“You’re not responsible,” says Natasha firmly, lifting the top of the bench-seat that also serves as storage. They’ve learned through hard experience to always bring an overnight bag on these little ‘day trips’; for Bruce, it can be a matter of public decency. Clint’s bag is stocked with a change of clothes, a few toiletries, one of his collapsible bows and a ‘trick quiver’ of arrows.

Steve walks past her, taking up position on the other side of the open hatch. “Doc, why would you feel responsible?”

Stark throws up his hands. “You know what? Let’s just all stay. I can move around some meetings… Cap can reschedule whatever it is he does with his life these days. There’s got to be, like, a Best Western or something around here, right? It’ll be fun. It’ll be like camping.”

Bruce speaks over him. “Steve, it’s just that for all we know, SHIELD was aiming for me. I mean… you know what I mean.” He winces. “The Hulk.”

“I don’t want to stay,” says Natasha, gritting her teeth as she searches for Bruce’s bag.

“Really?” Stark seems as genuinely flabbergasted as she’s ever heard him, but it’s not always easy to identify genuine with him. He could be leading up to a joke or an insult or something even worse. “You want to just… take off. Go back to Bugtown? Or are we talking about all the way back to New York? ‘See you later, good luck with that whole concussion thing?’ That’s the plan?”

Steve asks Bruce, “You really think that they would…”

“Yes,” says Bruce.

“Yes,” says Natasha.

This is what it’s like. All the time. The conversations that dissolve into cross-talk and bickering. The sarcasm and one-upmanship.

“Really?” asks Stark again. “Because I know if it was Pepper…”

“It’s _not_.”

Her voice is too loud, her words are too harsh. In an instant her nonchalant act is over - which was undoubtedly Stark’s plan - and the others halt in their conversation, staring her with identically wide-eyed expressions that under different circumstances would be comical.

She pushes past Stark – or would have if he hadn’t scooted out of her way – and hands Bruce the two bags, then turns and climbs the ramp once again, striding into the cockpit, not looking at anyone, trying like hell to keep up the pretense that she isn’t running away.

 

(5)

Eventually the Quinjet engines fire, escalating to a familiar pitch; lights flare against the window and into darkness.

For a while Clint lies there, staring at the night-blanked glass and straining his ears for the sound of her approaching footfalls, sharp and distinctive.

Five minutes pass. Ten. Finally he closes his eyes.

It isn’t that he expected her to hover at his bedside, and it’s not fair for him to be disappointed in her, not after he encouraged her to leave. Isn’t this what women are so often accused of (unfairly or not, he really has no context)? Setting up perverse little tests? Saying one thing and meaning another?

That isn’t him. When he’d told her to go, he had meant it.

Only now he can’t remember why.

Eventually his roommate – who introduces himself to everyone as “Donny, gallstones” – is wheeled back in. He’s in his fifties, a small guy with big ears and a vivid thatch of thinning red hair. “So, I missed meeting your old lady,” he says affably, once he’s been transferred back into bed. “I hear she’s really something else.”

“Yeah,” says Clint, eyes still closed, not in the mood to talk. “Yeah, she’s really something else.”

*

It would have been easier if things _had_ gone back to ‘normal’ after Frankfurt. Worse – because surely a little Natasha is better than no Natasha at all – but definitely easier.

At least then he would have had a good idea of where they stood. Instead they’re in this treacherous, uncharted in-between space, more than partners but less than a couple, a sort of demilitarized zone where the lines of communication are still open and the borders are decidedly porous, but a free trade agreement has yet to be worked out.

She let him kiss her – and kissed him back – that day in the gym, in the middle of discussing oversights Stark might have made with regards to the equipment. And then she’d pulled away.

She’d initiated things a week later in the dining room, although admittedly he may have instigated it by standing a _little_ closer than necessary while reaching for a bowl on a top shelf. If Steve hadn’t walked in at an inopportune moment, things might have gotten a lot more interesting than granola and Raisin Nut Bran usually warranted.

And then there was the day when they had gone down to a local deli for lunch – as any friends might – and on the way back they had been spontaneous, deciding to drop into a megaplex on their route and see a comedy that had been getting rave reviews.

The previews had barely been over before his hands had been unclasping her bra and her fingers had been engaged in a rigorous exploration of his obliques, lats and pecs. Despite the fact that they were discrete, the theater was dark, and the vast majority of seats were empty, the part of Steve Rogers had in this case been played by an unctuous teenaged usher who’d hissed at them to _act their age_.

Clint had seriously considered force-feeding the guy his little flashlight.

Natasha’s never been predictable by anyone’s definition, but this is the first time since he’s known her that she’s actually reminded him of a weather report: _overcast, with brief periods of sunshine._

*

No one’s ever accused him of thinking too much, at least not to his face.

As a kid he was impulsive and more than a little self-destructive, not neglecting to consider the consequences of his actions but acting in spite of the consequences, in spite of the danger, in spite of the wisdom of those who knew better. According to the shrink SHIELD made him go to after Coulson brought him in, he had “misbehaved” because he was searching for a strong male role model, someone who would set boundaries and enforce them, not through violence or cutting words but through firmness and determination and consistency. He had been searching for a father, not the piss-poor example Harold had set but an actual parent.

The families that social services had set them up with hadn’t been _terrible_ , exactly, but none of them had been equipped to handle Barney and Clint Barton, and none of the placements lasted long. When it seemed inevitable that they would be split up, they had run away; Barney had tried to be Dad then, which was even more of a disaster.

And then they had found Carson’s, or Carson’s had found them, and the carnival life left little time for quiet contemplation; it was all motion and commotion: putting up the tents, breaking them down, packing and unpacking and packing again, on the road from one town to another and then doing it all again. And through it all, the carnival folk themselves: the music, the laughter, the audience’s applause, the voices raised in anger, the secrets in the shadows, the thrum of the bowstring, the flight of an arrow to its target, all whirling in a kaleidoscope of sound and color, ever-changing, ever-shifting.

And then Barney was gone. Turning a corner, the back of his head just visible through the back window of the bus.

They’d talked about going into the Army, back when their parents were still alive, and maybe that was why Clint enlisted, or maybe it was like the shrink said and he was still searching for stability and authority, still looking for Dad in the face of every officer who came around. And the Army did teach him to follow commands, just like it taught him to fire a gun – although his hands always ached for the curved limbs of a bow, the versatility of an arrow – and in a way maybe it taught him to think. All that time between firefights. All those hours in a sniper’s position, waiting for an unwary target to stray into his field of vision. He’d never been able to turn his mind off completely.

His mind had served him well enough in the years after the military, when taking from those at the top seemed like the next logical step from the code of ethics he’d learned at Carson’s, where regular folks were ‘clems’ and ‘chumps’ and ‘rubes’ and ‘townies’ who deserved to be parted from their money. It had served him even better after his improbable recruitment by SHIELD, which demanded more than a keen set of eyes and a steady hand on the trigger; Fury only wanted people who could think their way out of a tough situation, who could improvise when things got weird, who were able to act, quickly and with common sense, when waiting for orders wasn’t an option.

Clint thinks he’s gotten even better at thinking since meeting Natasha. Maybe because, with her, thinking is often safer than acting, but also maybe sometimes she seems to operate on a whole other plane and he’s just trying to keep up.

He’s been thinking a lot lately. About where he’s come from and where he’s headed. About how long he’ll be physically able to do this job, and how long he wants to. About Harold and Edith Barton, and about Barney. About SHIELD and the Avengers and of course about Natasha, and how he can possibly go back to the way things were before, about how his only other choice may be to walk away from her entirely.

Tonight, though, all he wants to do is turn off his mind.

 

(6)

Natasha is looking forward to a quiet flight back, time alone in the cockpit where she can relax in the light of the instrument panels and try to find a place of logic in a maelstrom of emotion.

So, naturally, instead of staying in the back with Steve, Stark saunters in a few minutes after takeoff. He collapses into the co-pilot’s chair, folding his arms behind his head and staring out through the window as though entranced by the sight of moonless, unrelieved darkness.

Obviously he isn’t there for the view, and Natasha can only hope that he’ll stick to topics that make it less likely she’ll be compelled to kill him before they arrive: SHIELD’s criminal incompetence, for example, or the myriad ways he finds Jane Foster lacking as a scientist, which is a subject he’ll only directly broach when Thor isn’t around. But the miles pass and the silence stretches, becoming so taut and uncomfortable that Natasha feels compelled to break it. “ _Stop_.”

From the corner of her eye she sees Stark swivel the chair a few degrees in her direction. “What?”

“I can hear you over there,” she informs him tartly, “Judging me.”

“Sorry,” says Stark, swiveling away from her again. “I’ll try to judge more quietly.”

Natasha makes a minor course correction to avoid the path of a passenger jet, frowning at her darkened reflection in the glass. She’s full enough of her _own_ doubts and regrets at the moment, thank you very much; while she might have tolerated, say, Coulson’s input (might have even _welcomed_ it if it meant things had gone down differently) she doesn’t need to be castigated by someone who is barely more than a stranger. “ _Thanks_.”

Her scornful tone – and her obvious desire to end the conversation – is lost on Stark. Or, more likely, he’s just the kind of perverse personality who revels in social awkwardness because he thinks it puts him in control. Part of the reason he doesn’t play well with others is because he’s so resistant to ceding power, real or imagined, to another person in any situation. “It’s just that I’m still trying to figure you two out,” he continues, unfolding his arms, drumming his fingers against the molded-plastic armrests, picking out a one-two, one-two rhythm reminiscent of a heartbeat. “Steve, Bruce, Thor… _them_ I understand. They’re here, metaphorically speaking, because there aren’t exactly a lot of other options aside from becoming a shut-in. They all have some of the same issues, when you come right down to it: I mean, Steve has the whole God and Country thing, but aside from that you’ve got the whole party tray of neuroses: revenge, anger, parental neglect…”

His windshield reflection – as distorted as Natasha’s, with black pits for eyes and a macabre slash of a mouth – flinches involuntarily and then goes very still, as though his own rambling insouciance hit closer to home than he expected. Natasha squelches an uncharacteristic pang of pity and says coldly, “You mean we’re not in your league.”

Stark runs a hand absently over the instrument panel, depressing buttons and toggling switches as though he’s ignorant of their function; now it’s Natasha’s turn to flinch, but the Quinjet’s course continues unimpeded as the omnipresent AI, with a faint electronic sigh, ignores its maker’s careless touch. “I’m not sure anyone is,” he says baldly, “but that’s not what I meant. All these issues, all these… peculiarities, they’ve made us loners. We’ve either been set apart or we’ve done it to ourselves. And I guess the next logical step for people like us is to find other loners to be alone with.”

Natasha still isn’t sure where he’s going with this, and uncertainty only makes her hostility grow. “I’m here because of Fisher,” she replies sourly, leaving the rest unsaid: _And Clint followed because he thinks he owes me, because he’s talked himself into being in love with me, but he would have been better off keeping his distance_.

“You and Barton are a package deal,” Stark retorts, “for reasons that have nothing to do with Sloane Fisher. Or with Manhattan, for that matter. I do my homework, _Natalie_.”

Natasha turns, looking at Stark full-on for the first time in this irritating, interminable exchange, less disturbed by his words than by his almost wistful tone, as though an incomprehensibly-wealthy engineering genius and corporate heir is jealous of something _she_ has, something she hardly understands, something she keeps screwing up. She thinks of the first conversation they ever had in Stark Tower, of the well-publicized deportation in Central Park, of the key card in the glove box. She wonders if Stark has made it further into her classified file than even Fury suspected or if she’s simply, after almost six years of easy Western living, become _that_ easy to read. Both possibilities are worrisome. “Whatever you think you know…”

“Of everybody on this plane,” Stark interjects, “I think it’s safe to say I am the _least_ -qualified to explain how Clint Barton’s mind works. But I know enough to tell you what Steve won’t, since he’s pretending not to hear any of this because he thinks it’s not his place to interfere: when you disappeared, the only thing Barton cared about was finding you.”

Natasha feels a flush rise in her cheeks, not just because she’d nearly forgotten about Steve’s silent presence only a few yards away and not just because Stark’s words are spoken so plainly, unadorned by either mockery or censure, delivered as a simple and uncontestable truth. No, the brief blossom of heat is because she _knows_ it’s true, because she knows what Clint went through and can’t help but compare his actions to her own after Loki took him in New Mexico.

Namely, she had cut short her interrogation of Luchkov at Coulson’s direction and had then continued to play the good little SHIELD agent. She had retrieved Banner from Calcutta and escorted him to the Carrier, waiting on the sidelines as an almost hopeless search was initiated… and even _that_ was primarily a search for the Tesseract and its alien larcenist, with barely a thought spared for the men under his thrall, with Fury’s whispered words echoing in her mind: _He could be anywhere in the world. We don’t have time._

And she’d told herself that a search for Loki and the Tesseract would in effect be a search for Clint, because the self-styled god wouldn’t let either his prize or his puppet out of sight, only both of those assumptions had been proven wrong, and Loki’s capture had filled her with a frenetic kind of despair that she’d never encountered before.

Then, the words: Thor’s words, drifting across the bridge of the Helicarrier by some trick of acoustics, words spoken of Selvig but applicable to Clint, words that set in sentences the nameless fear that had been her companion since Coulson’s call: _I dread what he plans for him once he’s done_.

In the end, of course, Clint had come to her – just a pawn in Loki’s larger game, an acceptable loss to an intergalactic madman – and through some combination of skill and luck neither of them died at the hands of the other. He had been safe and even whole, after a fashion, and she had been able to shove aside the feeling that she should or could have done something else, something _more_ , to find him faster, to spare him pain, to stop the chain of events that had led to Coulson’s death.

Now Stark’s here to push it all back into her lap: the guilt, the inadequacy, the _debt_ : “He flew halfway around the world to find you. He walked into the lion’s den, knowing it was a trap, just because he _thought_ you might be in there. And he kind of left SHIELD in the lurch so that he could be with you.”

“I didn’t ask him to do that,” Natasha says quietly, swallowing around a new pain in her throat. It’s not the panicky, suffocating constriction that had come over her in Clint’s hospital room but, rather, an ache that seems born of all the things she’s never been able to say to him. Things like _thank you_ and _I love you_ and _I don’t deserve you_.

“Well, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?” asks Stark. “You didn’t have to ask. And now you’re here and he’s there, and I guess that’s what I don’t understand.”

 

(7)

The desert is alive.

Too many people don’t understand that. To them, the word ‘desert’ is evocative of nothing but sun-scorched rocks and parched sand. They consider it a landscape as arid as the moon, a place that freezes by night and burns by day, populated by tinder-dry mesquite and barrel cactus hoarding every hard-fought drop of liquid. They think the animals of such deadly regions are small and as juiceless as the rocks they slink beneath: lacquer-black scorpions and rough-skinned serpents.

In truth, the desert is alive. Wildly, gloriously alive.

For instance, the high desert of the Mojave, which occupies portions of Nevada, Utah, Arizona and southern California, is rich with flora, not just the well-known cacti and Joshua trees but also sage, yucca, palm, fir and juniper. The fauna is even more diverse: cougars and coyotes, jackrabbits and bighorn sheep, burrowing owls and red-tailed hawks and zebra-tailed lizards.

The desert of the Colorado Plateau, on which the towns of Puente Antiguo and Ashmore, New Mexico are located, is also abundant, a secret world teeming with life. There are aspen and cottonwood, wolves, porcupines, diamondbacks, peccaries and the iconic roadrunner.

There is also Kamala.


	3. Part Three

** PART THREE **

_“I said to my soul_  
Be still  
And wait without hope  
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing  
And wait without love  
For love would be love of the wrong thing.”

_\- T.S. Eliot_

(After)

I am twenty-five.

I have few recollections of the place where I grew up, the house that burned to the ground with my parents’ bodies inside, but those I do have I take out and examine, on occasion, to keep them from deteriorating in the vault of my memory.

The house had a brick façade, I recall, and a little brick wall separating the tiny front yard from the street. There was a metal gate in the wall, and it squeaked when it opened. There were rose bushes, and the front door was blue. The windows were trimmed in white molding. The curtains were striped blue and white and gray.

I’ve seen the pictures of what the house became, what it looked like after the fire, despite the efforts of others to keep them from me. Of course those images are always more vivid, more _real_ despite their two-dimensional nature: the soot-stained brick, the remnants of curtains, the ashes that were all that were left of the rose bushes.

The pictures were kept from me, I know, because people who care about me – but don’t really understand – hadn’t wanted me to be unduly distressed. They hadn’t wanted my true memories of the place to be tarnished by grief and anger at what it became. What they don’t comprehend is that I need that grief to fuel me.

That anger, properly directed, drives the engine of my heart.

 

(Before: 1993)

_The trainers are brutal, the doctors are worse, and it’s not unusual for a girl to vanish completely between one day and the next._

_The adults won’t talk about it. If you ask, you are ignored. If you persist, you are punished._

_Natalia does not ask. Not any more._

_They recycle names. Good Russian names, meant to engender a sense of pride and, ultimately, loyalty, as though a girl will be happier to die for her country if her name is Yelena instead of Helen._

_The Yelena that Natalia knows now – wheat-blonde hair, pale blue eyes, porcelain skin – is not the same one that was here three months ago. But Natalia finds that, as she tries to picture the old Yelena, she can’t quite bring the girl’s face to mind._

_*_

_The new Anya arrives the summer of the year Natalia turns eight. She is small and scrawny with short black hair and fierce black eyes, and she comes accompanied by Christopher Artemiev, he of the ruined face and the pale, spidery hands._

_The other girls all shrink away when the man comes into sight, for they have learned by now that nothing good can come of falling beneath his notice. Natalia watches from the shadows and tries to think of him as nothing but a target, a mission objective. If she was tasked with killing Artemiev, how would she do it?_

_Knowing his predilection for young girls, it would be easy enough to get him alone. But he is so big, so powerful, that a pint-sized assassin would run the risk of being overpowered. Natalia thinks: better to just sneak up on him and push him down a flight of stairs. If he isn’t dead at the bottom… then, the knife._

_The new Anya watches Artemiev as well, not with either the timid terror or the burning loathing that would mark her as already having become one of his victims, but with the keen, attentive interest of one observing the anatomy and habits of a particularly poisonous insect._

 

(Before: 2012)

_Trouble looking for a place to happen: New York City to Allentown, Pennsylvania to Wheeling, just southwest of Pittsburgh, to Columbus in the heart of the Buckeye State._

_*_

_Natasha takes the wheel for the first leg of the trip, driving faster than the posted speed limit, pushing the little SUV’s engine until it wheezes asthmatically beneath the hood. Clint dozes in the passenger’s seat, untroubled by thoughts of catastrophic spin-outs or collisions. She’s too good for that._

_They’re in Allentown by sundown. They find a likely neighborhood, and then a promising stretch of pavement between a shuttered sandwich shop and a liquor store._

_They park in an adjacent lot, wait for night to fall, and then Natasha pulls up the hood of her sweatshirt and crosses over to the target area. Clint, unfolding his bow, watches as she jams her hands into her pockets, repeatedly glancing at her watch, and generally behaves like a rabbit that knows it is pursued by the hound._

_Within ten minutes, the act bears fruit. A group of five men – their race or age indistinguishable from where Clint sits – exits the liquor store, full of strut and swagger as they approach his partner, as self-assured as any pack of wild dogs. Natasha pretends to notice them for the first time, taking a few hasty steps back – just in case they need the encouragement – and Clint can imagine them closing in around her, beer on their breath and malice in their eyes._

_She moves like water. It’s the only way he can describe it: like a fountain, one move flowing seamlessly into the next. Like a waterfall: raw and unstoppable power._

_One. Two. Three._

_She leaves the last two for him. The little one he takes out right away, noting the silvery glint of the knife in his hand an instant before Natasha does. The fat one he lets run a few yards before putting a hole in the back of his knee._

_She returns a few minutes later, having retrieved both arrows. Like the vivid red of her hair, the black-fletched shafts are practically his calling card._

_The call will come eventually, but they don’t want to give SHIELD an easy path to trace._

_Is this entrapment? Vigilantism? Maybe. They’ve discussed it before and were unable to come up with a definition that satisfied them both. Call it a hobby, then, a way to decompress and, at the same time, hone their skills._

_They aren’t saving the world. Five unconscious gangbangers in a quiet liquor store parking lot won’t make the nightly news, which is exactly the point. They haven’t done anything, really, except that the next time those creeps see a lone, vulnerable woman… well, maybe they’ll think twice before deciding that she’s easy prey._

_If not, at least two of them will run a little slower than before._

_They drive._

_*_

_They follow the main artery of Interstate 70 into Columbus and then head north on 71 to where a rent-by-the-month RV campground squats on the banks of a narrow lake. Summer means that the place is busy, the water crowded with boats and bare limbs and shrieking children, and no one notices when Natasha and Clint park the SUV on a disused service road and hike in through the back, instead of properly checking in at the front office._

_The Skyline Aljo is Clint’s cache; Natasha’s bolt-holes are more likely to be eclectic apartments in European cities, and she has happily ceded the American Midwest to him. She prefers expensive accommodations when she can get them, but even she has to acknowledge that the twenty-seven foot Skyline, with electric and water hook-ups, central heating and cooling, and all the modern conveniences, is not exactly roughing it._

_They open some cans without really considering the labels, microwave the contents, and eat in folding chairs under the awning in the ‘front yard.’ There’s no lake view here, just an expanse of untrammeled forest fifty yards or so from where they sit. It’s a straight shot back to the SUV if they need to make a hasty exit._

_Clint doesn’t anticipate needing to make a hasty exit, but it’s a hard habit to break, even if he was in the mind to do so. He’s not. Old habits like this have saved his neck more than once._

_They build a campfire in the pit he dug the last time he was here. Open fires are strictly prohibited under the campground rules, but neither of them will lose any sleep over that. Natasha spreads out a musty-smelling blanket and Clint finds half a bottle of Scotch in a cabinet and they sit there, drinking and watching the moon rise._

_Coulson’s memorial was planned for today. Clint’s insides twist with guilt when he thinks about it, with the sense that they should have been there. Because who else would be? Rogers split, the same as them, but he didn’t really know the agent anyway, was just an object of his adoration. Coulson never discussed a family. Dated a woman the previous spring but hadn’t talked about her in a while. _

_People like them don’t have families. They don’t keep attachments. All they have is other people like them._

_They drink._

_*_

_They flip a coin for the bed. She tries to cheat, he catches her, and since that was the real game all along, she cedes the challenge to him._

_She unfolds the sofa into something half the width of a twin mattress while he takes the slightly larger bed jammed into the back of the RV. The night is uncomfortably warm and he strips down to his shorts without a second thought, lying on his back, listening to the wind moving through the trees, the faint sounds of insects and voices and traffic on the distant highway._

_An hour later she slips between the folding doors like a wraith, skin glowing ghostly white against the stark black of her tank top and panties, and climbs in beside him._

_They don’t touch; they never do, and for good reason. He remembers the taste of her mouth, the heat of her skin, as she moved her body against his in an open, wanton invitation… and he makes himself forget._

_Makes himself._

_Forget._

_Midnight comes and goes. Eventually he closes his eyes._

_They sleep._

 

(8)

In the world of human trafficking, the name _Christopher Artemiev_ means different things to different people.

Certainly it’s synonymous with _success_. Artemiev has been a name in the business since his twenties, in the days when the KGB was among his most regular customers, when human test subjects were in high demand under the assumption that each new theory and every brilliant procedure would lead to the breakthrough that would end the Cold War.

Unfortunately for people like Artemiev, Reagan and Gorbachev happened first.

Many of the current players in the industry caution that Artemiev, being a forty-six year old throwback to the old days, is an _eccentric_. He does not work with a team of cronies, orchestrating snatchings and handoffs from afar, through fax and cable and wireless signal. He does not hold himself above the murk and mess that he creates; instead he wades, apparently happily, ankle-deep in the filth of his own devising. Nor does he work in bulk, operating through luck and opportunity to grab those he believes will fetch a high price on certain blacker-than-black markets.

No. He is picky. He is discerning. He claims to have an eye for fine things, and he deals only with those who share his unique vision.

Some refer to him as the _Mad Russian_ , although never within earshot. Artemiev was actually born in Tropojë, Albania… but no one who has been in a room with him for more than five minutes has ever had cause to question the first half of the appellation.

There is something undeniably strange about him, not just the facial scars and pockmarks that must be the legacy of a childhood illness, but also a subtle wrongness to his features, as though some distorting pressure beneath his skull has begun to build, pushing bones just ever so slightly out of alignment. As though the ugliness that is in his heart is constantly seeking a greater, more malignant expression in his face.

Sloane Fisher would like to strap him to a table, shove a needle in his arm, and scrub all of the hatefulness out of his brain. However, she’s a busy woman, and a piece of work like Artemiev would be a job and a half. She suspects that she would feel the need for a long, hot shower at the end of it, as well, and that she would risk contaminating herself with the taint of his inner filth.

He sits in her office, looking around with interest. The décor in this room is dull and utilitarian, with furnishings purchased through local office supply stores and artwork jejune enough to grace the pages of an 18-month calendar. No cool metal and sleek white, no red accents and compelling Picasso, nothing to remind her of the life in Colombia that was so cruelly taken from her. This could be the office of a county clerk or dull-minded bureaucrat or particularly apathetic lawyer. It is not the office of a woman who will change the world.

But it is.

The girl sits in the other chair. She is seven and small for her age, with elfin features, gray eyes, and straight auburn hair kept tucked behind her ears. Her navy blue dress is neat and clean. Her feet dangle six inches above the floor. The only sign of her fear is the way she clasps her hands together in her lap, so tightly that the skin is pulled tight and pale across the knuckles.

Children make Sloane nervous.

The customer, however, is always right. The customer is doubly right when that customer also speaks on behalf of her patron. This new facility might pale beside the memory of Villavicencio, but its possibilities branch out into the future, wider and further than poor dead Bruno could have ever imagined.

Bruno had been a vain, selfish, cruel man whose ambition had required constant stoking. His scope had been tremendously limited. It is right that he is dead and Sloane is alive.

Artemiev finishes his contemplation of the room and deigns to answer Sloane’s question at last. “Yes, Doctor, I am quite sure. Test her yourself if you wish, but my supplier is never wrong about these sorts of things.” He smiles. His lips are puffy, and the lines bracketing his mouth are unnaturally deep. “You could ask dear Kamala about that. Or maybe you couldn’t.”

Sloane ignores the jab, nodding at the child. “Surely she’s too young.”

Artemiev shrugs. “I have provided younger. They grow up fast, or they don’t grow up at all.”

Sloane frowns at his bluntness, but the girl in the blue dress does not react. Does not move. Barely seems to blink or breathe, as though she is paralyzed by fear. As though she has sent her mind far away from this dowdy little office, into memories of picnics or parks or other things Sloane supposes little girls enjoy.

The customer is always right.

“Can I at least assume you’ve kept your hands off of her?” she snaps, annoyed at being forced into this situation by DeGrasse and Lycaon, at being required to deal with human slime like Artemiev. “Any time I have to spend undoing your damage is coming out of your cut.”

Artemiev tries to look put-out and only succeeds in looking like a badly-sculpted wax statue of a pedophile. “I promised, yes? Besides…” He grins. “At my age, you all look like children to me.”

“Touch me,” says Sloane coldly, “and I won’t shoot your balls off. I’ll make you shoot your own balls off.” _Thereby doing the entire human race a favor._

Artemiev regards her with displeasure. “Please,” he scolds, glancing down at the girl. “Doctor, there is a child in the room. Kindly watch your language.”

 

(9)

Rogers calls and suggests a biker bar up on 1st.

“Why do you assume I have a bike?” asks Maria.

“You have a bike.”

Maria has a Kawasaki ZX-14, but she considers borrowing a neighbor’s Prius, just to see what kind of reaction she might get when she shows up.

She’s gotten in a lot of trouble over the years doing things just to see what might happen. However, she’s also been incredibly successful at her job by taking a similar approach. You win some, you lose some. You roll the dice, and if you don’t like what comes up, you roll them again. Of course it’s not always that easy in real life, and most of what Maria knows about rolling dice comes from Yahztee marathons with her Aunt Jo. But the same principle applies.

*

Maria walks into the bar, pausing to let her eyes adjust, and realizes that despite the fact that she’s a woman – the only woman in the place, although at two in the afternoon it’s not busy – and despite Rogers’ customized Harley parked out front, he’s still the most likely of them two of them to stand out in this kind of place. It’s not his good looks, because cities like this are full of attractive people, or even the clothes, which are unremarkable. No, there’s just something about Steve Rogers that doesn’t fit, like an old-fashioned wind-up timepiece on a shelf of digital clocks.

He glances up from the bottle of beer she imagines he’s been nursing, sees her without really _seeing_ her, and then does a double-take. “Wow. Ag…” He catches himself. “Maria. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

Her hair is loose, slightly windblown and helmet-mussed. She’s wearing jeans and a leather jacket. _What would he think if he saw me in a dress?_

Maria can’t remember the last time she wore a dress. She’s not positive that she actually owns one.

“I’m off the clock,” she says blandly, taking the stool to his right. This area of the bar is empty; the other customers are seated in shadowy booths – the better to really get that afternoon buzz going – or shooting pool in the back.

The barkeep, an obscenely fat man who barely fits behind his counter, waddles up to them. Maria gestures to Rogers’ beer and the man brings up a fresh bottle, uncapping it before tottering back towards the pool game.

“The service here,” says Rogers quietly, “is not that great.”

Maria snorts. “He probably figures I’m your supplier, and if the cops come and ask him what he saw, he wants to be able to say _nothing_ and mean it.”

“You don’t look much like a drug dealer.”

“Not many do anymore, I hear. What’s up?”

They’ve met a couple of times in the past month, of course, but never… unofficially. Maria can’t imagine Rogers engaging in any kind of subterfuge, unless Stark has rubbed off on him even more than the director fears, because with his looks and his inability to blend in and his general _way_ of being he would probably make the worst spy ever. On the other hand, she doesn’t think he’s asked her here so she can write a proper Yelp review on this establishment’s shoddy customer service.

“Puente Antiguo,” says Rogers, his expression darkening. “Last night. What happened?”

“It wasn’t done on purpose, if that’s what you think,” says Maria, taking a drink while she considers how much to say. “The pilot got a little overanxious, that’s all. Didn’t realize the thing would blow up like that.”

Rogers taps his own bottle against the bar top; surprisingly, it gives a hollow sound. “Barton could have been killed,” he says softly.

Another drink. A longer pull this time as she tries not to cringe.

Barton and Romanoff. What would Coulson say if he could see them now? It’s not worth thinking about, and it’s not her fault, even if this sick, squirming sensation beneath her ribs feels uncomfortably like guilt. “I guess that’s one of the risks he takes, playing with the big boys.”

“I don’t believe you’re really that callous.”

Maria sighs. _Callous would be better_ , she thinks. _Callous_ _would be easier than caring too much._ “Maybe I am.”

“I thought you’d take this more seriously.”

“If the director says there’s a threat to the two of them, then there’s a threat,” she replies. “But I don’t believe it’s coming from the Council. They’re powerful people and they wouldn’t risk their power and their influence for someone like Sloane Fisher. My guess is that whoever she dealt with was lying to her.”

“Someone helped Fisher and Manesh escape,” Rogers insists. “What about an… intermediary? A person who’s trying to move up in the organization, who _does_ think it’s worth the risk?”

Maria shrugs, trying not to show how much that very real possibility bothers her. “Like I said, I’m trusting the director on this one. But I don’t have reason to think last night was anything more than trigger-happy incompetence. The world’s full of stupid people, Captain. We end up with our fair share.” She takes another drink, hesitates, and then decides… _what the hell_. “How are they? Barton and Romanoff. Besides last night, I mean.”

Rogers’ brow furrows. “’How are they?’” he echoes. “Separately or together?”

“Together? As in… _together_?”

He winces. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”

Worst. Spy. Ever.

But Maria smiles as she takes a last, long pull from her bottle. Barton and Romanoff, an item. What would Coulson say, indeed?  It had been something of a running joke between them, or else a running argument… it was hard to say which.

Back when Romanoff had first turned, Fury had asked Maria to spend some time with the other woman. Maria hadn’t yet risen to her current position – those duties had fallen to Agent Park, before he’d gone into Internal Affairs – but Fury had trusted her. “You can read people,” he’d said at the time. “You can make a quick decision. And you won’t bullshit me.” He’d paused. “That’s a compliment.”

“I suspected it was, sir.”

The director hadn’t been worried about Romanoff being a double agent as much as he’d been concerned about her ability to adapt to a new lifestyle. No more taking the jobs she wanted and blowing off the rest. No more running off without anyone else being the wiser. No more Soviet-era ends-justify-the-means shit… although SHIELD could justify with the best of them, when it suited their purpose.

Romanoff had never really let Maria all the way in. Maybe that was to be expected in someone who’d grown up the way she had: expecting cruelty, anticipating treachery, losing those she became close to. Even in those days, Barton was the only one it seemed like she really bonded with.

Maria had watched the two of them carefully. She knew the Black Widow’s file forward and backward, and she knew that Barton, who was far from being a bad guy, was as susceptible as the next man to a pretty face. She’d worried that Barton would fall under Romanoff’s spell… or, alternately, that Romanoff would feel indebted to the man who had spared her life, obligated to give him when she thought he wanted.

But, surprisingly, the Natasha Romanoff who Maria came to know was as about as driven by physical passion as your average houseplant, as though sexuality was something she reserved for work hours, to be put on and taken off like an item of clothing. It seemed that Romanoff trusted Barton implicitly, and that the feeling was mutual, but there was no desire there. No touching, no flirting, no lingering glances when they thought no one was looking.

“Give it time,” Coulson had said about six months ago, when they sat down to review personnel files in advance of the new year’s audit.

Maria had shaken her head. “They’re both smarter than that,” she’d insisted.

 _Well, go figure, Phil. I guess you were right_.

 

(10)

The headache hasn’t subsided, but then, Doctor Rajani warns him that it might not for a while. Then she gives him a long, Steve Rogers-worthy lecture about _protecting his brain blah blah blah proper safety precautions blah blah blah_ as though he’s going to start wearing a bicycle helmet every time he leaves the Tower.

Banner listens to all of the doctor’s advice very intently, back to playing the role of concerned cousin. They still don’t look much like they could be related, but in the light of day, shaved and fully clothed, Banner looks a lot more respectable than he had in his post-Hulk state the previous evening. Besides, Rajani and her staff seem sympathetic towards the guy who spent the night in the downstairs waiting room.

“Where’s your wife?” asks Kimberly, the nurse, when she arrives to remove his IV. She cocks an eyebrow at Clint when he can’t come up with a lie quickly enough. “Well?”

“Had to get home and take care of the kids,” mutters Clint.

To her credit, Kimberly doesn’t laugh out loud. She’s probably seen enough of his scars, and of the X-rays taken the night before, to put two and two together even without the rumor mill churning out a rare bit of truth. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re quite the family man,” she says dryly.

He dresses slowly. His limbs and torso feel pretty decent, all things considered, but every motion of his head sends fresh pulses of pain through his skull, and bending down to tie his shoes makes him a little dizzy.

Had Natasha been here, she would have tied them without needing to be asked, and he wouldn’t have felt awkward about it. Partners take care of each other. That’s just how it works.

That’s how it’s supposed to work.

*

“You can’t exactly flag down a cab around here,” says Banner as they ride the elevator to the lobby. “But there’s a motel a block away, and Doctor Foster’s going to come pick me up from there in about an hour. Or she’ll send Darcy. I told her as long as it wasn’t Thor driving, I didn’t care…”

Clint had asked Banner not to call Stark, not to arrange a plane. Not on his account, anyway. He needs time, the same as Natasha does. He’s not ready to see her again.

Except that she’s standing just beyond the sliding doors, avoiding the worst of the southwestern sun in the shade of a velvet ash between the hospital and the street. A bag is slung over her shoulder, and when she sees him she straightens quickly, jerkily, as though not sure if she should move towards him or away.

The sight of her fills Clint with conflicting emotions, but the strongest at this moment is unease. He approaches her slowly, not sure what he’ll say when he arrives, and then before he’s had time to put the words together in his mind they’re face to face, with Banner standing off to one side, looking apprehensive.

Natasha takes the initiative. “I’m sorry. I was stupid.”

He’d like to agree, wholeheartedly and with such profuse enthusiasm that it takes some of the sting out of the moment, but his head hurts and his heart hurts and it’s all he can do to nod. The desert sun seems unnaturally bright, as though his eyes have become permanently night-adapted after twelve hours indoors, and he fumbles in his pocket for his sunglasses.

The better to hide behind.

 

(11)

“I thought you said Romanoff left with the others.”

“She did,” says Kamala, enjoying the way anger makes the Doctor’s voice tremble.

Only a few months ago she would have shared Fisher’s anger, her sense that the workings of the world had somehow betrayed them. Back then they had been more than employee and employer; they had been comrades, maybe even friends, and partners in the gradual reshaping of the world.

Except that all of it was a lie.

Fisher’s objectives are no longer Kamala’s objectives, and although Kamala is no happier to see Natasha Romanoff than the Doctor is to hear her name, she will suffer the inconvenience with a smile. “She walked to the jet with Banner,” Kamala recites, “argued with the others for a moment, entered, and then they took off. Only Banner remained behind.”

The cell line is quiet while Fisher thinks.

Kamala knows that Banner holds no temptations for the Doctor. Physiologically the man is a freak show; psychologically he must be a minefield. _Could_ Fisher treat him, walk him back to before, find a place of peace, command him to never reach that level of fury which, it is said, leads to his transformation? Perhaps. But there seems to be great risk involved, and little profit in it.

Kamala observes the trio from her third-story perch in an unused office, watching as they cross the street against the light. Barton is moving more slowly than usual, and the others adjust their pace to match. In his current state Banner is unremarkable, unmemorable, but the figure of Romanoff reminds Kamala uneasily of flames. Not just the color of her hair, not just the bright New Mexican sun. Something else. Something worse.

“I don’t see any of the others,” Kamala continues. “They must have circled around at some point… dropped her off far enough out that the jet wouldn’t be noticed.”

“Why?” demands the Doctor, almost spitting out the word.

“I don’t know.”

Kamala has only ever seen Romanoff from a distance. The woman’s stay at the Villavicencio facility had been short and to the point, most of her time spent in the treatment and recovery rooms. Kamala had ostensibly been front-office staff, with little time for what Dr. Witten had laughingly referred to as _wet work_ : the memory treatments, the expunctions, the mind-wiping.

Some real wet work had taken place a couple of days later in a California eucalyptus grove. Witten hadn’t been laughing then.

She doesn’t suggest to the Doctor that they try to reacquire Romanoff. Their original plan is on precarious ground as it is, and they don’t possess the resources they once did. But even if they had, even with an army of operatives and the most effective cocktail of sedatives imaginable, Kamala doubts that Fisher would decide to bring Romanoff back into the fold. Too many frustrations, too many resentments, are wrapped up in that pretty little package.

The Doctor blames Witten for Romanoff’s shoddy expunction, even though the MEE had been _her_ baby, and she blames Romanoff for being too willful, too stubborn, too screwed up by a childhood as a Soviet lab rat to follow her programming as she ought. But Kamala thinks that Fisher is ignoring the obvious. Maybe the work done on Romanoff _had_ been substandard, and maybe she _hadn’t_ been a good subject to begin with. Maybe everything would have leaked back through, eventually.

But then those recollections would have tripped the trigger, the fail safe Fisher had implanted to prevent memory recovery, and Romanoff would have died… or, even better, she would have spent the rest of her natural life as a vegetable.

What had prevented that, what had honestly shot all of their plans to hell, had been Barton. Rogers, too, but Barton had been the impetus, the drive; he had traveled to Colombia – pretending to come to them in good faith – stolen the trigger antidote, and left Fisher and Ajax and all the others to SHIELD’s untender mercies. He had ruined years of planning, unthinkingly destroyed lives and livelihoods, all in the name of recovering Natasha Romanoff.

The thought burns in Kamala’s stomach, a curdled mixture of resentment and admiration. She had felt a connection with Barton from the moment she saw him in Villavicencio, something more than physical attraction, although that was certainly part of it: a bone-deep certainty that their fates are inextricably linked.

In the new institute’s current location, their association with Lycaon reestablished and strengthened, SHIELD’s personnel files are as easily accessible to Kamala as books in the public library. She’s intimately familiar with the details of Barton’s record. She knows about his life before SHIELD, and the particulars of his work with them over the past decade and a half, but it is the events of a mere five years ago that hold the most interest for her.

Sent to eliminate Romanoff after previous attempts at contact were unsuccessful – sent, ironically enough, to save Sloane Fisher from kidnapping, torture and death at the hands of the Black Widow – he ignored his orders. He brought her in to his superiors, instead, doing what three more experienced agents had been unable to accomplish. He had saved her from herself.

And then, a month ago, he had done it again.

 _If he can save her twice_ , Kamala thinks, _he can certainly save me once._

 

(12)

The motel only has basic rooms available, no suites, so Natasha takes two for the night.

She has a Stark Industries company credit card, but in the interests of anonymity she pays cash up-front. The desk clerk looks surprised, but another twenty slid across the counter helps him get over it.

They order Chinese delivery and eat straight from the carton in Bruce’s room. She watches Clint carefully; at first he only picks at his fried rice, but eventually manages to put half of it away.

Bruce does the bulk of the talking, most of it related to the science behind Jane Foster’s rift and theories about the space lice. Clint offers one or two comments, but there is a strained, sullen quality to his voice that Natasha can’t attribute solely to a post-concussion headache.

Darcy arrives in Jane’s van about an hour later. Thor, riding shotgun, is excited to see them, solicitous towards Clint, and eager to tell them about how they’ve been driving through the desert, seeking and destroying space lice that wandered beyond the perimeter before anyone discovered that the rift was still open.

“Those things are just so _gross_ ,” says Darcy vehemently, proving a talent for understatement to rival Captain America’s.

Then Bruce leaves in the van and it’s just the two of them, and they go next door to their room.

Natasha wonders if he finds these arrangements presumptuous, if she’s given up all rights to sleep beside him, even platonically. If he would rather be alone. _I wasn’t sure whether or not we were still an us._

 _Neither am I,_ she thinks.

Natasha closes the curtains and switches on the bathroom light, leaving the others dark. She encourages Clint to take some more Tylenol, hating the businesslike brusqueness of her voice, and he accedes silently before laying back on one of the beds, eyes closed but still awake; she can tell by the rate and tone of his breath. She sits on the other bed, takes a well-worn pack of cards from her bag, and plays solitaire in the half-light from the bathroom, working by touch as much as sight. Sometimes she glances up to find him watching her from beneath hooded lids; more and more, the quality of his gaze sends a strange flutter of desire through her stomach.

She tries to focus on the cards. Three of clubs. Jack of hearts. Six of diamonds. No good. Dead end.

Even though it’s early – not even twenty-four hours since they first arrived in New Mexico to meet and defeat the space lice threat – she retreats to the bathroom to wash and pull on her sleepwear. Not that she’s tired. Despite having gotten little rest the night before, she’s almost preternaturally alert to every sound, acutely aware of the texture of cotton and polyester against her skin.

_You’re horny, Romanoff. Get over it._

She emerges from the bathroom to find Clint’s taken the opportunity to perform his own – albeit more limited – preparations for sleep. He’s turned on his side, away from her, giving her a good view of his naked, muscled back, the narrowing of his hips beneath the elastic of his shorts, the toned curves of his calves and thighs.

Her pulse quickens. She sits on the edge of her bed, absently shuffling the cards. The lack of order in a properly-randomized deck often soothes her, but tonight her racing mind tries to find patterns in the arbitrary arrangement of black and red, flat-faced royalty and common numerals and freelance jokers with their trickster’s leer.

The previous night in Clint’s hospital room, caught up in panic and despair and self-pity, she had looked at this man and she had thought _I don’t deserve you_. But that’s foolish; living has nothing to do with _deserving_. If it did, innocent people wouldn’t die, and evil plans would never come to fruition.

Had she _deserved_ what had happened to her as a girl? Even the worst child has no real malice in them, certainly not enough to warrant more than a decade of psychological and physical torment, and Natasha knows she was far from the worst. She had only been a little girl, tossed alone and afraid into a world of monsters. They had sought to make her into one of them, and out of self-preservation she had obliged.

It was nothing she had asked for. Nothing she deserved. To think otherwise would be to accept the Buddhist principle of reincarnation, to posit that she had been Hitler or Stalin or Mao Zedong in a previous life and therefore deserving of pain and loss and punishment.

Natasha doesn’t believe in reincarnation. She can’t bear to. One life is hard enough, and nothing she can do will ever balance her ledger.

She’s known Clint for barely more than five years. She spent more than three times as long in the thrall of the Red Room. But she’s come to understand that life cannot be measured in terms of linear years, timed like a race or a game of chess. Life, if it can be measured at all, can only be measured in terms of memory. What does she recollect of the first twenty-two years of her miserable life? Not much. And what she _wants_ to remember accounts for even less.

But the last five years… she wants all of it. Every day, every _second_ , she wishes she could live over and over again, even the hard times (the night she left for Volgograd; the instant, thirty-thousand feet above Earth, when she accepted in her heart that his life might end by her hand) because the hard times came part and parcel with the best moments of her life.

The hospital in upstate New York the day after Montreal, when he showed her his scars for the first time. The taverna in Naples, his lips against her ear, his arm around her shoulders. The evening by the fire at an Ohioan campground, the scent of Scotch and smoke and _him_. The way he held her when she awoke in Mill Valley, following the thread of his voice through the battlefield of her mind. The way he found her in Frankfurt, kissed her, made love to her, told her that her loved her, made her _believe_ that he loved her.

He knows her better than anyone else in the world. If anyone _could_ love her, it would be him. And if he does love her, even with all he knows about her, that would be a miracle.

Does he? After last night… _can_ he?

She slides the playing cards back into their box. Walks across the room and circles his bed until she’s standing in front of him. He looks up at her, says her name in a bewildered whisper that doesn’t match the intensity in his eyes.

She lies down next to him. Against him. No proscription against touching, not now, not ever again. She needs his skin, all of it, as much as he’ll give, and he grabs her, strips her, holds her, pinning her with his hands and his hips; they are tangled.

*

Natasha can feel the tension knotting his muscles, strumming the chords of his nerves. She remembers a night in New York City, _the_ night, when she offered herself to him and he walked away. She had been shocked at how much it hurt, to have her body rejected when she knew it was the only thing she had worth giving. Now, even as they come together it feels as though he’s pushing her away again, and it scares the hell out of her.

For the first time he is not gentle, but that’s not the problem. He’s never frightened her, not like that, and his strong hands and demanding mouth are such a part of him, of who he is beneath the surface, that she finds herself eager to submit. _Take whatever you want_ , she wants to say, _whatever part of me you want_ , as though that can be an apology for her hard-heartedness.

There is no anger in his eyes or his actions, only a pain that is both physical and emotional, and at the same time distance and emptiness, a vacuum that only base need can fill.

Is this love?

Maybe it’s better if it isn’t.

*

She is face-down on the bed, fingers twisted in the sheets, his hands circling her hips, his breath hard and hot against the nape of her neck; she is panting, trembling, reduced to wordless sounds, a scream building in her throat.

*

Afterward she presses herself against him, belly and breasts and cheek against his back, his sweat on her lips, her hands flat against his chest, his heartbeat thrumming beneath her fingers. “Dammit,” she gasps in a voice that sounds like it belongs to someone else, a voice still hoarse and shaking. “Dammit,” she says again, more of a whisper now, and a third time: “ _Dammit_ , I love you.”


	4. Part Four

** PART FOUR **

_“What is hell? Hell is oneself._  
Hell is alone, the other figures in it  
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from  
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.”

  _\- T.S. Eliot_

(Before: 1993)

_They call her Anya. They tell her that Devi died in the fire that killed her family._

_She remembers striking the match, setting the flames against a pile of old clothes, but she doesn’t tell them that._

_There are other girls here, but it’s not like the Lotus House. This is Russia, and it is cold and hard and unyielding, and the scholarship here is not done for the love of learning, but for the love of death. The students, such as they are, do not dream of a better life. As far as Anya can tell they do not dream at all._

_They take parts of her away. Sometimes they replace them with new parts, stories that become pictures that become reality. Sometimes they just let the emptiness yawn until the edges close up over it, and she is a little less than she once was._

_They make her beautiful and clever and dangerous._

_They make her believe that Mary Charlotte was right: she is special._

_Then they make her forget Mary Charlotte, but the belief remains._

 

(Before: 2008)

_Clint learns the truth about Volgograd only after the fact, when enough time has passed since Natasha radioed in that Fury is legitimately concerned._

_All Clint had known was that she vanished in the dead of night – like any good spy – and that none of the rank and file seemed surprised about it. ‘_ More than a year has passed since she came to work for SHIELD,’ _their shrugs seemed to say. ‘_ We’re surprised she lasted this long.’

_And then there was Fury, who had refused to address the issue one way or another. “Let it go, Barton,” was all he would say, although maybe he would have risked more if Agent Park hadn’t been watching their interplay with such keen interest._

_The night before her disappearance, Clint and Natasha had gone to Chalet Dell'Oblio in the south of Naples, to meet with a CI with intel about the situation inside Pakistan._

_The man had never showed, and rather than leave immediately after the appointed time, thereby raising the suspicions of any unnoted observers, the two of them had played up the Couple on Vacation angle. They drank their share of Italian wine – Natasha drank more than he did; she had a metabolism like an over-stoked furnace – laughed loudly, and in general were memorable as a noisy pair of annoying Americans, rather than as two furtive types who never made eye contact, who came and went like shadows into the night._

_A good part of successful spy-craft was being seen – not as you were, but as you wished to be remembered._

_Clint had genuinely enjoyed himself, despite the pretense. He wasn’t especially fond of wine, regardless of the vintage, but he was adept at playing the irritating American tourist… and it had given him an excuse to sit near Natasha, to put an arm around her shoulder, to lean in close, whispering observations about the other bar patrons and listening to the music of her answering giggle, as though he had said something delightfully filthy._

_He was attracted to Natasha; he had stopped trying to tell himself otherwise. Of course, he wasn’t going to do anything about it. Not with a woman like her. But he could still enjoy moments like this._

_They had staggered drunkenly out into the street a little before two in the morning, arms around each other as though that was all that was keeping them upright, and she had only extricated herself before turning the corner and coming in view of the safehouse. She had smiled at him, a smile that was rare but never failed to make him think that he had done something right, something honestly good when he had lowered his bow in that Frankfurt alley._

_The next morning she was gone._

_No note. No message of any kind. Her clothes and toiletries remained, so he knew she hadn’t been some kind of extended hallucination, but her weapons had vanished._

_Too close, he’d thought, blaming himself. Too far._

_Two weeks later – back in the loop, no longer feeling responsible, just deeply unhappy – he sits in the back room of a Parisian café, one that is known to both of them, pretending to drink coffee and read a newspaper. The brew tastes like battery acid, even laced with plenty of cream and sugar, and despite perusing the paper for the better part of an hour he hasn’t managed to get past the front page story of Pakistan’s president’s resignation… and wondering which of their people, if any, had been involved in that._

_Not Natasha. Fury had been clear, for once. Volgograd._

_When he hears her voice in the front of the café, along with the owner’s gruff growl of pleasure at seeing her again, Clint’s newspaper trembles slightly, as though a stray gust has snaked into the back room through an open window. He carefully folds the paper, setting it aside as she sits down across from him, a mug clasped between her hands._

_As always, the first word to go through his mind when seeing her after a protracted absence is dangerous._

_The second is beautiful, which is new._

_She is beautiful – long hair tumbled over her shoulders, pale skin flawless in the light filtered through one grimy window – but she also appears unwell. Her face is thinner than he remembers from Naples. Her blouse seems to hang limply from her shoulders, rather than hugging the curves of her body, and purple-gray shadows give her eyes a deep-set, haunted look._

_“Why not send me too?” he had asked Fury, barely containing his anger, and the director had said, “Because we don’t want SHIELD implicated in any way. No one’s going to have any problem believing that as soon as the Red Room resurfaced, the Black Widow would take the opportunity for vengeance.”_

_Now – because despite accepting Fury’s reasoning, despite believing it to be true enough, he still doesn’t like it – he says, “They shouldn’t have made you go alone.”_

_“I wasn’t alone,” she says softly, staring into the inky depths of her coffee cup. “There were plenty of ghosts along for the ride.”_

_Clint knows that Natasha was sent to gather information, plant bugs, but leave the facility intact. He also knows about the fire. It was Fury’s best guess as to why she had taken so long to return: Natasha hated screwing up._

_Natasha hadn’t screwed up. If there had been ghosts, she had burned them away._

_“I’m sorry,” he says, and when she looks up, bemused, he elaborates: “I’m sorry you had to go back there.”_

_Her reply is long in coming, the eventual words as solemn as a graveyard prayer. “I needed to. I think… I had to go back to remember why I left in the first place.”_

 

(13)

Clint wakes from a nightmare with no recollection of the specific fear, just a bone-itching anxiety that follows him out of sleep.

He sits up in bed, really seeing the shabby little motel room for the first time. Morning sunshine gleams along the edges of each curtain panel, but the light no longer makes his eyes water. A faint ache still traces the fissures of his skull, but the pain has receded since last night.

Last night…

His gaze drifts down to the woman beside him, and he catches his breath without quite knowing why.

She sleeps on her stomach, arms tucked beneath the pillow, face turned towards him but hidden behind a veil of hair. His eyes follow the shallow channel of her spine, ricocheting between her shoulder blades. The skin of her back is not flawless, but faintly marred by a constellation of minor scars, some pale and shiny-smooth, others rippled and raised. A new mark is visible between neck and shoulder, an even row of faint pink semicircles where his teeth nearly broke the skin.

Pulse racing, mouth dry, he slips from the bed. She stirs, murmurs and subsides, but he knows she is awake.

He escapes to the bathroom, taking only a change of clothes. He leaves his overnight bag by the door, within easy reach.

A strange thought, one he can’t easily explain, but one that seems as non-negotiable as breathing.

*

He steps into the shower stall, beneath the hot spray; unsteady hands strip the paper wrapper from a chalky bar of soap and chafe it against a washcloth, struggling to work up a decent lather. The weak and watery suds have been washed down the swirling drain before he realizes he is trying to scrub her scent away. Not because it disgusts him… because it unnerves him.

_Itch, itch, itch,_ like tiny creatures scrabbling through his marrow, and he leans forward, tilting his face into the spray, feeling each individual stream like a needle against his skin. Steam rises around him but it feels more like fog, cool and heavy, blurring the edges, holding him, cocooning him. It would be easy to forget where he is. Who he is.

_Her lips against his shoulder, her breath stirring the hairs on the back of his neck._ Dammit, I love you.

He turns his face from the spray, draws a sharp and shuddering breath. Panic constricts around his heart, as solid as a fist, and the fist deals a blow that leaves him with only one word in his mind.

_Danger_ —

He tries to hold his growing anxiety away from himself, to look at it objectively, rationally, but it’s too close and too big and it consumes everything.

_Natasha’s in danger—_

He shakes his head to reject the words, to dislodge the notion from his mind. It’s not possible. He would have heard something, even through the closed door, even over the sound of the water. She wouldn’t go quietly, no matter the danger.

But the thought, as expansive and pervasive as the steam around him, won’t be denied. He breathes it in, takes it into himself. _She needs your help—_

He lets the water sluice away the last of the soap and steps out of the shower, hastily wrapping a towel around his waist as he cracks open the bathroom door.

Pale sunlight, silence, and the prone woman atop the sheets, breathing steadily: none of it does a damn thing to steady his nerves, to banish the fear. If anything it becomes more pronounced, thoughts fracturing along fault lines he never noticed, impossibilities coalescing into certainty, as he closes the door once again.

Natasha is in danger. He can feel it like he feels the swirling steam against his skin, knows it like he knows his own name.

It is reality, the only reality.

That can only mean that the woman in his bed is not Natasha.

*

For a moment he can’t think. His mind is the blank page preceding a new chapter, the black screen before the credits roll. Then the emptiness passes and the words reappear, but they are the words of someone else, a coldly logical consciousness more alien than anything he’s ever encountered. And it speaks with his voice.

That woman is not Natasha—

_Impossible. Ridiculous_.

He tries to reason his way through it, blame his paranoia on the passion – the _strangeness_ – of the night before. His actions seem like those of a different man, a man of heated words and sullen silences, a man of thoughtless cruelty and careful neglect. A man like his father.

He had pushed her down into the mattress and he had held her and he had _taken_ her without tenderness, without consideration… almost without a single word. He’d been hurt and frustrated and angry, half-resigned to the fact that it might be their last time together, desperate to feel her skin beneath his, and too damn stubborn to let her see that he was hurting. But she hadn’t protested his rough treatment, hadn’t told him to stop, hadn’t extricated herself with the ease he knows she’s capable of. Instead she had molded herself to him, front-to-back, had slept naked and vulnerable at his side as she had so many times in Germany.

Maybe he had been different last night. She hadn’t.

_So when had she changed?_

_When had everything changed?_

The answer is a thunderclap between his ears; nausea roils like sound waves and storm clouds, and he grips the counter’s edge to steady himself.

_The rain falls, streaming down from the eaves as he clambers in through the open window. She stands at the kitchen sink, bent almost double with her head in the basin, dressed only in black cotton shorts and a yellow lace-trimmed tank. He walks up behind her, washes the dye from her hair, kisses her, goes down on his knees there on the hard floor, worshipping her body with his mouth until she cries out and falls into his arms, pliant and speechless—_

…he shivers, even though the steam still surrounds him, is in his eyes and his lungs…

_In the hotel bed she clings to him, allowing him to cradle her against his chest, as hot tears soak into the collar of his dress shirt—_

The support of the counter is not enough. Joints loose, muscles weak, he sits down hard on the closed toilet. His ears are ringing, his _brain_ is ringing: a high-pitched warble as shrill as a dog whistle echoing between neurons, plucking notes of memory from each synapse as it passes.

_A woman, blonde, beautiful, sits tied to a chair. “You’re Aten,” says Rogers, and she smiles grimly—_

No. He shakes his head, trying to clear it. Pinches the bridge of his nose, struggling for clarity. Aten was a construct, a fragment of personality, a name for something that never really existed.

Right?

_Right?_

Nothing seems certain now except for this unassailable fear. He’s not afraid for himself, either body or mind, but for Nat. What he knows argues with what he thought he knew, everything he believed, and the present triumphs over the past.

_Fisher still has her—_

What?

_Replaced her with Aten—_

Not possible.

_Jesus. Why didn’t I notice—_

Nothing to notice.

_How could I not see—_

Nothing to see.

_Shut up shut up shut up!_

…and he’s standing again, with no memory of jumping to his feet, staring into the mirror but the mirror is obscured by steam, and he’s suddenly convinced that if he reaches out to wipe the condensation away his hand will pass _through_ the glass. Nothing is solid now. Nothing is real, or what it is expected to be, and he’s sick with the memory of the things he’s done with this impostor, the things he’s told her, words that were never meant for her ears. He doesn’t want to believe it, would rather declare himself mad, but the truth of it all seems evident in every corner of his fear-ridden mind.

_It was a trick. A feint. Fisher still has Natasha—_

He dresses quickly and with shaking hands, bile burning in his stomach. He has to get out. Away from this place. Away from _her_.

_Oh, God, Nat, I’m so sorry._

*

The impostor is sitting up in bed when he opens the door again, pulling her nightshirt over her head, and now that he knows what to look for he _sees_ it—

The wariness when their eyes briefly meet. The slight _wrongness_ of her features.

Not a perfect copy, then, but more than a passing resemblance. A doppelganger. He’d read somewhere that everybody has one, and the effects can no doubt be enhanced by the judicious use of scalpel and suture and even mind-altering drugs.

He forces a smile, his heart knocking against his ribs, and kneels as though to tie a shoe. Reaches for his bag—

Stands with bow in hand, string to his lips, arrow aimed at her heart.

Her pistol is already pointed at his chest.

Her face is white, her lips blanching to purple-gray, but her voice is as steady as her hands. “Clint, it’s _me_.”

He intends to laugh, _tries_ to laugh, but his mouth only twitches against the bowstring in a humorless grimace. “I don’t think so.”

Her eyes are wide, the whites showing all around, framed in turn by dark lashes. Every feature familiar and beautiful and loved and yet utterly alien, a lie, just a lie he let himself believe.

“Drop the weapon,” she says evenly, “and let’s talk.”

Sure, he thinks, she wants to talk. She probably wants to strap him to the bed and inject him with a hallucinogenic pharmacopeia that’ll render him docile and unsuspecting all over again. Then Sloane Fisher will walk through that door, smiling sweetly, and sandblast the memories of the past half-hour from his brain, leaving her double agent free to do… whatever it is she’s meant to do.

Or maybe the game is over and he’s simply meant to die.

“ _You_ drop it,” he tells her. “Or I’ll kill you. I swear to God I will.”

He figures his chances of shooting her are good. Of course, the possibility that she’ll hit him before she falls is also decent. Maybe they’ll both die here in this room. Maybe that would be for the best.

Three long seconds pass, measured in heartbeats, in the vibration of the string against his fingers.

The impostor stares at him. Lashes flicker. Lips part. Resolve falters.

She lowers the gun.

There is a knock at the door.

 

(14)

“Answer it,” says Clint.

His eyes are hard and flat but they are still _his_ , with no tell-tale gleam of alien possession, and Natasha can only assume that the hospital tests missed something, that intracranial pressure has robbed her partner of his sense, that he’s not seeing her at all, that in her place stands a shadow, a phantasm that terrifies him.

It doesn’t matter, really. All that matters is surviving this moment.

“Drop the weapon first,” he adds.

*

When she’d learned that he’d been suborned by Loki she’d eventually come to accept two terrible truths.

One: she might be forced to kill him in order to survive.

Two: like it or not, nothing she felt for him could be stronger than the very human desire, in the heat of the moment, to continue living. After all, nothing went deeper than survival.

She’d been wrong on both counts.

*

She puts the gun on the mattress. It’s still within her reach, but he wouldn’t be able to retrieve it anyway without lowering his own weapon. And she wouldn’t be able to grab it, raise it, and fire it without taking an arrow in the throat.

He doesn’t relax. His eyes continue to track her from the far end of the fletched shaft.

Natasha opens the door.

*

The first thing Bruce notices, of course, is her lack of pants. The nightshirt comes down to mid-thigh, leaving nothing exposed that might not be seen in a cocktail dress or miniskirt, but he automatically turns away, apologizing, until Clint’s voice calls him back. “Banner. Get in here.”

Natasha steps away from the door and Bruce walks past her, eyes still averted. “I heard voices,” he starts to say, looking up tentatively, as though expecting to see Clint in a similar state of undress. “I thought you might want to get…”

He sees the arrow. Freezes. A tremor flutters across his face, as faint as the shadow of a moth.

_Please_ , thinks Natasha. _Please, no_.

But even in his current state Clint knows better than to threaten Bruce. The weapon is still aimed at her, as it was the first time she ever saw him, the night she expected to die. The night she wanted to die. The night he did not kill her.

But this is a different man.

“Close the door,” says Clint, sweat beading on his brow, and she silently accedes. _Survive the moment._

Bruce stares between the two of them, hands held out as though to prove his harmlessness. “What the hell is going on?”

Clint looks away from Natasha – although she knows she is still squarely in his sights, that she will not be able to move the smallest muscle without attracting his attention – and says tonelessly, “that’s not Natasha.”

She flinches, not meaning to, and he glares at her.

Bruce frowns, gaping like a goldfish, and scrutinizes Natasha with narrowed eyes, even pushing his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose to get a better look. The frown deepens as he turns back to Clint. “Could have fooled me,” he says slowly.

“Fooled all of us,” says Clint shortly. “She’s a… a doppelganger. I don’t know… I think… I think she might be Aten.”

The accusation, the name, makes Natasha’s breath catch in her throat.

Bruce is befuddled. He’d only been tangentially involved with her rescue, but he knows the story well enough. “Barton…” He pauses, starts again, his voice soft and reasonable, no hint of frustration or incredulity. “Clint, Aten didn’t exist, remember? Or she did but… she _was_ Natasha.”

A bead of sweat on Clint’s temple reaches terminal mass and begins its slow slide down the terse, twitching line of his jaw. “No, Natasha’s still out there,” he says hotly. “She’s in trouble. Whoever _this_ is, it’s not her.” He looks at her again, eyes fevered but not completely lacking in sanity. Swallowing thickly, adjusting his grip on the bow, he nods towards the tabletop lamp. “Tie her up.”

“What?” Bruce is sweating now too, and not from the heat. Whether or not Clint is actually threatening him directly, this kind of tension can’t be good.

“The cord. Tie her wrists. Ankles.”

“But…”

“Do it,” says Natasha.

 

(15)

Across the street from the motel, at a café table in an outdoor strip mall, Kamala sips an iced coffee and listens.

_Interesting._

A pair of earbuds trail wires down from her ears, into a jacket pocket, leading not to a phone or an iPod but to a small, powerful radio, which is diligently receiving the signal from the transmitter she’d placed on Barton’s duffle bag the previous night, after she’d finished the rest of her assignment.

Yesterday, their prospects had looked bleak. Dinner and half an hour of science prattle from Banner about bridges and bugs. A brief interlude by the Asgardian and an annoying twit called Darcy. Then boring, boring silence punctuated only by a distinctive slap-slap-slap that Kamala had eventually identified as playing cards being dealt.

Cards. Good idea. She should have brought cards.

There’d been no real way to determine how long it would take Barton’s program to kick in, or even what form it might take. Kamala was an operative, after all, not an operator, and so Fisher had decided to keep things simple and let Barton’s own mind take things from there.

After all, as the Doctor had once explained, all you can do is paint with broad strokes, seed a few notions and hope they take root. You can’t control where they go after that. With any luck Barton had some nice, deep-seated PTSD issues that his overprotective handler – overprotective _dead_ handler – had neglected to include in his file.

Romanoff turning up out of the blue had almost ruined everything. Kamala had worried that the other woman might be able to restrain Barton when the kick came, or knock him out, or talk him through it somehow (which shouldn’t have been possible, but Kamala couldn’t put anything past these two) or maybe use her feminine wiles to distract him from the fear.

In fact, Kamala had suffered through a very uncomfortable half-hour while a chorus of moans, groans, gasps, oaths and an inordinate amount of bed-spring squeaking had dripped into her ears from the room across the street, like her own personal low-quality audio-only porno. She’d harbored some small hope that Barton might launch into a full-fledged panic attack _in situ_ , so to speak, but eventually the two of them had finished up and seemed to spend the remainder of the night in deep and restful sleep.

Boring.

All of Kamala’s patience had paid off, however, with the theatrics this morning. While she was a little irritated Barton had automatically gone into White Knight mode on Romanoff’s behalf, it was telling that he had transferred his anxiety, his sense of impending danger, onto someone else. And it was amusing when he started accusing Romanoff, the same woman he’d plowed into the mattress the night before, of being some sort of impostor.

_Damned_ amusing.

And then there was his reference to Aten. Kamala had read about that little wrinkle in the files, although she’d been smart enough not to bring it up around Fisher. Somehow, even after Romanoff had been regressed to her pre-SHIELD days, even when all of her more recent memories were poisoned by the trigger, she’d been able to secret some part of her mind away. And that part had called itself Aten.

Interesting.

Kamala finishes her coffee and throws the plastic cup into a recycling bin. She tries to be a responsible citizen whenever possible.

The next part of the mission starts now. The next part of the game. To Fisher, it’s revenge with a side of morbid scientific curiosity, which is the only kind of curiosity she knows.

To Kamala, it’s life and death.


	5. Part Five

** PART FIVE **

_Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind_  
Cannot bear very much reality.  
Time past and time future  
What might have been and what has been  
Point to one end, which is always present.

_\- T.S. Eliot_

(After)

I am seventeen and my parents are worried, although they hide their fear behind a mask of mild disapproval. In the past they’ve always been able to turn their worry into something else. Action. Control. But now I’m leaving and even though they’ve agreed to it, even though they know it’s what I want, they don’t like it.

“It’s just… so far away,” says my mother, her lips compressed into a thin line.

“Not that far, really.” I decide not to mention that it’s only California, not another planet. She has a very stubborn, decidedly negative opinion of California.

“Criminology,” muses dad. “Like you didn’t learn enough about that from us.”

I just smile, hugging him, and then the rest of the family comes in. They’re led by Sasha – sitting atop Charlie’s shoulders, enjoying the view and the attention – who doesn’t understand that this is a going-away party, who is happy in the uncomplicated way only a five year-old can be. The others are asking about dinner and music and drinks, and Howie and the other kids are running around playing Cops and Aliens, and the moment is over. But my parents’ eyes follow me for the rest of the night, full of concerns they won’t name and questions I can’t answer.

 

(Before: 2012)

_He drowned, once._

_Coulson always qualifies it with ‘almost’ – almost_ _drowned – but Clint remembers swallowing half the sea, breathing in the rest, and puking it all up after they fished him out. If that doesn’t count as drowning, nothing does._

_This is worse._

_*_

_He feels perfectly in his right mind… until he looks a little closer and sees what it is he’s doing. _

_Shooting Fury in the chest._

_Trying to ram Hill into the side of the tunnel._

_Driving into the night with the Tesseract and an alien megalomaniac and counting the evening a success._

_There’s a small part of him still struggling to breathe, but it’s being smothered by a weight greater than that of all the oceans combined, compacted into nothingness by the great squeezing hand of inevitability._

_He’d step in front of a truck if he could. He’d put a bullet in his own brain, just to stop from being crushed. But his puppeteer, his God, won’t let him. His grip is implacable, his control absolute._

_Clint is just a toy. Just a tool. But a useful one, and not easily replaced._ You can die later, when I’m finished with you _, promises God._

_*_

Please, Natasha.

_It’s a refrain in the single chamber of his mind that is still his own. A room, locked and sealed, that becomes steadily smaller._

Please, Natasha.

Kill him. Or me.

_After a while he can’t tell the difference anymore._

(Before: 2012)

_London_ _agrees with Mary Charlotte._

_She is not British, although she has pretended to be on occasion, just as she has pretended to be a Catholic nun. Honestly, she is no longer quite sure what she is. A little of this, a little of that._

_She is standing in line at the grocery store, idly watching a nearby television screen, the kind shopkeepers have learned to position near lines like this to prevent the customers from killing each other out of sheer boredom. The channel is turned to a celebrity-trash talk show, which everyone is watching while pretending not to watch, and when the hosts play footage of a recent Tony Stark press conference – interspersed liberally with scenes from last month’s devastation in New York City – Mary Charlotte agrees with the rest of the people not watching that yes, he really does seem like he must be a complete prat, but the suit is quite nice in a flashy, American sort of way._

_Mary Charlotte’s phone rings. The other customers seem amused by the sight of a nun – even a thin, attractive, modern-looking nun in her mid-forties – with a cell phone, but she merely smiles. “The Lord’s work follows me everywhere,” she chirrups, before turning away to answer the call._

_If she were in truth a practicing Catholic, and the voice on the other end of the line was that of Satan himself, she would not be more repulsed than she is when she hears these words: “It’s me. I have an order to fill.”_

_“Dear,” says Mary Charlotte sweetly, for the benefit of eavesdroppers, “I’m afraid that I’m no longer in that line of work.”_

_“Don’t give me that shit, Charlotte,” says the Mad Russian with a barking laugh. “You have your gift, don’t you? I bet you’re thinking of someone right now.”_

_A child springs instantly to mind: a little girl with bright gray eyes and red-brown hair and a clever, pointed face. She attends a school where Mary Charlotte often volunteers, and she is undoubtedly a special child. “It will take some time,” she says slowly. “And it will be difficult.” She refuses to take undue risks. London is not Bangalore, after all._

_“We’re dealing with deep pockets here,” says Artemiev slyly. “Not the Russians, either, or the Chinese.”_

_Mary Charlotte is surprised. “Americans?” she asks._

_“Even better. SHIELD.”_

(16)

So, Natasha thinks. This is what dying actually feels like.

She’s come close to dying before, more than once. She’s always too busy trying to stay alive at the time to give it much thought, but afterwards, looking back, each brush with mortality has a quality of unreality to it that makes her wonder if she’d imagined the whole thing.

She sits in the motel chair as Bruce ties her ankles and wrists together with lengths of power cord, and she watches Clint, and it feels like dying.

“You and Thor will have to get her to New York,” Clint says, observing the process with undisguised loathing, “or call Stark and Rogers and get them back out here. Keep her restrained. She may not be Natasha but she’s probably almost as dangerous.”

Bruce questions none of this, nodding as though Clint’s ravings are well-reasoned logic. “And where are you going to be?” he asks, completing his task. The knots aren’t especially tight, but Clint could kill her before she could free herself. The bowstring is still pulled taut, the arrow unerringly aimed, even though his muscles must be burning with the strain. She is only too familiar with her partner’s stamina.

Clint’s eyes slide into a distance only he can see. “West,” he says finally. “I think Fisher has Natasha somewhere to the west.”

“West, sure,” says Bruce agreeably, although not without a nervous smile. “That makes sense. I should go with you, though. Let Thor and the others deal with old Fake Natasha here.”

Clint’s own smile is strained, little more than a baring of teeth. “Doc, I’m not quite that stupid. Judging by how much slack you left in those cords, you either think I’m nuts… or Fisher somehow replaced you, too.”

_It’s like Loki all over again_ , Natasha thinks, her stomach turning, _but… not_. In a way it’s worse. At least then she’d only had to fight him (and she knew how to fight him, fighting him was second nature); she hadn’t had to watch the sweat streaking his face, hadn’t had to listen to the madness rolling off his lips, hadn’t had to see him fall apart in front of her.

“Oh, no, I’m the real deal,” says Bruce hastily. “Genuine Bruce Banner, accept no substitutes.”

 

Clint looks at him coldly. “It doesn’t matter. I can do this on my own.”

In one fluid motion he unstrings the bow – Natasha tenses, sees Bruce’s eyes go towards the gun on the bed, but even if they had it there’s nothing they could _do_ unless they’re prepared to shoot him – grabs the bag at his feet, and then he’s moving towards them, between them, pushing past Bruce, ignoring Natasha as though she’s now beneath his notice, to the door, over the threshold, outside, gone.

*

Bruce stands frozen, listening to the rapidly-receding rhythm of boots on concrete. “What,” he says distinctly, “ _the hell?_ ”

“Brain damage,” Natasha says numbly, similarly immobile, held not by the plastic-and-wire at her wrists and ankles but by the new vision of the future that spreads out in front of her: Clint, not simply pushing her away but unable to recognize her, unable to tell friend from foe.

Lost.

“But the doctor…”

“Forget the doctor.” The memory of the doctor, of the hospital staff in general, is the spark of anger that sets her in motion again. She’d _known_ that they couldn’t be trusted. Dammit, she’d known and she hadn’t done or even said a thing.

Natasha wriggles out of her bonds even as Bruce kneels to free her ankles, steps over him and out the door.

The motel has no internal hallways, just uncovered lengths of concrete separated by a strip of desert weed and rock. Their room is on the first of two floors – no higher vantage to search by, but also no stairs to negotiate – and she breaks into a sprint, rounding the corner of the building until the front portico and main avenue are in sight.

The land is flat. The streets are wide. She turns in a full circle.

Clint is gone.

*

She meets Bruce halfway back to the room, and he demands, “Now what?”

Once upon a time, his question would have been her own. She had been trained to be obedient, not innovative. But SHIELD had no interest in agents who couldn’t adapt, and she’d quickly become comfortable with improvisation. “We need to find him. Call Thor. He can cover more ground than we can. Tell him… tell him we’re going back to the hospital.”

“We are?”

Back in the room she steps into a pair of jeans, yanks the sleep shirt over her head – Bruce jumps and turns his back on her, muttering about a lack of warning – and replaces it with a bra and fresh t-shirt from her bag. “If there’s something wrong with Clint’s mind,” she says, stubbornly forcing herself to say the words, to face the possibility, “we need to know what it is. I want to talk to that doctor.”

*

Bruce calls Foster during the walk back to Ashmore General. Natasha can’t make out the other woman’s words, only her tone, but the tone isn’t good.

“Those things are coming through the rift faster than before,” says Bruce worriedly after he hangs up. “Thor’s hanging in there, but Dr. Foster’s afraid if he left they might overrun the town again. I think we’re on our own for now. Should we… is this something that SHIELD…”

“No.” If Clint doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be. And she needs to _know_. “Hospital first.”

*

They walk into the step-down unit at the same time that Kimberly Andrade appears to be leaving, purse in hand, a smile on her face as she chats with the nurse named Marie. When Natasha and Bruce step out of the elevator alcove Andrade stops short, waves Marie on, and smiles saucily. “So, Mrs. Barton, where’s the husband?”

Natasha isn’t in the mood to be mocked. She’s never in the mood, but if she was ever _to_ be in the proper mood this would not be the time. “Running around your town half-cocked, most likely.”

Andrade blinks, the smile sliding from her face. “Excuse me?”

Natasha forces herself to take a measured breath, wondering if she should defer to Bruce. Right now she’s so full of anger and fear that she feels incapable of sweet-talking the nurse into compliance. It might be time, she thinks unhappily, to cash in on a little name recognition. “You know who we are.”

It’s a statement, not a question, but Andrade nods. “My sister lives in Manhattan. Last summer she was almost crushed to death by a… what does the news call them? A leviathan?”

Natasha stiffens. “That wasn’t our fault…”

“I said _almost_ ,” Andrade interjects. “According to her, something ‘big, green and ugly’ jumped on the thing’s back, got its attention, and saved her life.” She glances sidelong at Bruce. “Thanks.”

Bruce’s cheeks redden; his reply is mostly a stammer.

“I figured if you wanted to be recognized,” Andrade continues, “you would have said something.” Her brow creases with genuine concern. “Now… what’s this about half-cocked?”

*

“No edema, no bleeding,” says Lila Rajani, lacing her fingers together. The doctor’s voice is maddeningly calm, her manner irritatingly competent. “No mass affects or midline shift. No fractures or irregular ventricles. I promise you, we wouldn’t have discharged him otherwise.”

“That can’t be right,” Natasha insists. She suddenly finds that she’s a big fan of brain injury. Injuries can be treated with therapy and medicine and, God forbid, surgery. Insanity is a lot messier. “You must have missed something.”

The doctor gives no indication of offense. “The brain is a tricky thing,” she says neutrally. “Did he exhibit any strange behavior after leaving yesterday?”

Natasha exchanges a brief glance with Bruce. She doesn’t feel the need to go into particulars – _well, he was quiet and a little withdrawn, because we’d sort of argued the night before, but then afterward we had mind-blowing sex and…_ “No nausea,” she evades. “No slurred speech or weakness.”

“No personality changes?”

“No,” she answers promptly, although Bruce still seems unconvinced. Maybe he’s noted the mark on her shoulder, or the faint redness around her wrists that may well darken into a short-lived bruise. It’s none of his damn business anyway.

“I really don’t know what to tell you,” says Rajani, spreading her hands. “We’ll need to get him back in the MRI, take some new pictures to see if anything has changed, but if you say he’s missing…”

“Pictures,” says Bruce abruptly.

“Pardon?”

“Pictures. Video. Do you have surveillance cameras?”

“Not in patient rooms,” says Rajani immediately, her smooth brow furrowing. “At the entrances, yes. The loading dock.”

“Can we see the video from last night?”

Rajani frowns. “I’ll have to speak to the facilities manager about that, I’m afraid. I don’t even have the password to the server.”

“Can you call him now?” Natasha asks. She doesn’t know where Bruce is going with this, suspects it’s nothing more than desperation given form – because what could video of the hospital entrances possibly tell them about Clint’s condition? – but she finds that she trusts his instincts.

The instant Rajani leaves the conference room, Bruce stands. “Come on.”

“The doctor…”

“If they keep their surveillance video on a server,” Bruce says, his eyes shining with new excitement, “then we don’t need a password. We have JARVIS.”

 

(17)

SHIELD may combine many of the worst aspects of an international paramilitary organization and an enormous bloated bureaucracy with no set budget or strict accountability, but at least somebody in charge of naming things has a sense of humor. The building on West 23rd Street is where SHIELD keeps its off-the-radar metro facility is emblazoned with the logo for Tektel Systems… which, as any good Schwarzenegger fan knows, was the name of his cover company when he played a bad-ass spy-slash-family man in the movie _True Lies_.

There’s a new above-board office in Brooklyn, a very respectable-looking midrise where protesters shrieking about their civil rights go to trample the lawn and harass passersby and where reporters go to ask questions they know they’ll never get straight answers to, but PR is really all that the place is good for. Tektel Systems is where much of the actual work gets done.

Unless, of course, the team from Internal Affairs is visiting, in which case no work gets done at all.

Benjamin Park is standing at the receptionist’s desk, engaged in friendly conversation with Jillian Wenzel. Because Human Resources also has a sense of humor and enjoys playing up stereotypes, the receptionist is bottle-blonde, wearing long acrylic fingernails and too much eye makeup. She is also the first line of defense against unwanted visitors, highly rated on every weapon in the substantial arsenal hidden behind the counter, and a _Sandan_ – third-degree black belt – in Okinawan Uechi Ryū karate.

Park sees Maria and abandons his conversation… which, judging by the expression on Jillian’s brightly-painted face – perky interest fading, replaced by hard-edged annoyance – is probably better for everybody.

Everybody except for Maria.

“Agent Park,” she says, making a mental note to talk to Jillian about her poker face, “I’m sorry. We were told you wouldn’t be in until tomorrow.”

Park – forty-two, just pushing five-foot-ten, with dark eyes and a well-trimmed goatee – has the generic good looks and affable manner common in most successful politicians, which is essentially what he is these days.

As Nick Fury’s right-hand man he’d gained a reputation for being both steady and efficient, but apparently the work hadn’t thrilled him; he’d left the position after only six months, landing in Internal Affairs as a desk jockey.

That was four years ago. Now he’s running the place.

“Don’t worry,” he says, smiling briefly. “Not a surprise inspection or anything. My prior business wrapped up sooner than I expected and I decided to take an earlier flight. I’m having cravings for the Dak Gui at this little place over on Carmine… best I’ve ever had, not that I’d ever tell my mother that.”

He looks at her expectantly for a few awkward seconds until Maria is able to decode this seemingly offhanded statement. She ignores Jillian’s silent fit of laughter and says, “Actually, I just had lunch.”

Park looks mildly dismayed, as any consummate politician might when presented with an unsupportive constituent, but not offended by her bluntness.

They had ‘dated’ for two weeks back after he had joined IA, which was exactly how much time passed between his asking her out for the first time and his getting assigned to the epic shitstorm that was Romanoff’s Volgograd mission. Maria hadn’t been directly implicated in any of that; even Coulson and Barton had been kept out of the loop, presumably for their own protection. But Maria had been sufficiently perturbed by the idea of socially seeing – and maybe eventually sleeping with – someone who was investigating the actions and motives of… well, not a friend, exactly, but a close acquaintance.

And, if anything, it would be even less appropriate now than four years ago. So if Park jumped on a plane and flown early to New York with the express hope of rekindling that guttered flame, well, that isn’t Maria’s problem.

*

In place of a Korean restaurant and candlelight: two cups of strong coffee – a mainstay at all hours, day and night – and Maria’s Tektel office.

It’s more of a closet, really, but that’s fine with her. She doesn’t spend much time earthside these days – now that the Helicarrier is really up and running and not threatening to drop out of the sky every time a bird hits one of the turbines – but not every aspect of her job must or even should be accomplished thousands of feet in the air.

Park looks around the cramped, windowless space, a faint look of distaste on his aristocratic features, and Maria can practically hear him thinking _there but for the grace of God go I_.

She slides behind the desk and sits, waits for him take his own seat across from her, and hides her forced smile behind a sip of coffee. She considers wasting a few moments with inconsequential small-talk in the hopes that something apocalyptic or at the very least catastrophic will happen, giving her a credible excuse to postpone this moment indefinitely, but that seems cowardly. Best to get this out of the way now, she decides. “How can we help you, Agent Park?”

If he’s pained by the formality, he gives no outward sign. “I wanted to speak with you because I have a few… lingering concerns. We’re wrapping up our initial investigation of the incident in New York…”

“The incident?” she echoes, bemused. It seems like a gross understatement, better applied to a traffic collision or construction accident than an alien attack via intergalactic portal.

Park shrugs. “There’s a very official designation, of course, and some not-so-official nicknames that have sprung up around the office, but to me it’s easier – and maybe safer – to just stick with ‘incident’.”

“And you don’t want to share these concerns of yours with Director Fury?”

He laces his fingers together and considers his words for a moment before responding. “Actually, Maria, Director Fury _is_ one of my concerns.”

She knows this, has known it from the moment that IA launched their investigation, but in the interests of discretion – and to keep this conversation from straying to a more dangerous place – she feigns confusion. “In retrospect, of course, we probably should have had more security at the New Mexico facility… but the way things went down, that might not have mattered. It might have just been more people for Loki to kill.”

Park shakes his head. “It’s not that. The security in place was reasonable when you consider that we were worried about _external_ threats. The Tesseract, the portal… nobody could have predicted what happened. Besides, assigning blame might be Senator Boynton’s game, but it’s not mine. I’m only interested in the future.”

“I think everyone’s interested in the future. What part of the future, specifically?”

“The part where our best hope for clean, sustainable energy took a one-way trip back to the planet Asgard,” says Park, sounding peevish for the first time. “The part where Loki’s scepter somehow went missing, although your girl Natasha admitted to having it in her possession. The part where billions of dollars of damage was done to the city of New York and we have almost nothing to show for it.”

Maria raises her brows. In truth, they have hardly come out of ‘the incident’ empty-handed. SHIELD scientists will spend the next twenty years deconstructing the Chitauri tech: their weapons, their vehicles and the warriors themselves, not to mention the leviathans. Then there is Selvig’s emitter – which he’d done his best to trash once Romanoff had closed the portal – and the data amassed by thousands of cameras and receivers all over the city during the battle itself. Something else is happening here.

“Are you sure you’re not channeling Boynton, Agent Park? Or is this your superiors talking?” she asks at last, although it might have been wiser not to, because despite pledges that Internal Affairs agents remain independent and fair she has no doubt that Park, with all of his ambitions, is simply repeating what the members of the Council have said to him. Even as she thinks this Rogers’s words come back to her. _“Someone helped Fisher and Manesh escape. What about an… intermediary? Someone who’s trying to move up in the organization, who does think it’s worth the risk?”_

Park’s eyes are stormy, his lips pressed into a straight line. “They’re not just my superiors, Maria. And they’re not an advisory board, they don’t make _suggestions_ …”

“They give orders,” she agrees. “Colonel Markham could tell you about orders.”

“Who?”

“Kevin Markham. The pilot who fired a nuclear weapon at Manhattan. He wasn’t _advised_ , he wasn’t given a _suggestion_ … he was _ordered_. But it’s funny… all the recordings of his radio chatter that day have gone missing, and Markham is rotting in a brig somewhere. Strange, isn’t it?”

The frustration bleeds from Park’s face, leaving only the lofty blankness of the consummate politician. “I had hoped you’d have more sense than this, Maria. I told them you would.”

Maria doesn’t need to ask who _they_ are. She’s tired of playing the naive waif anyway, even if she barely kept up the act for three minutes. “Sorry to disappoint,” she says, standing. “We’ll have to continue this discussion at our original appointed time, Agent Park. I have work to do. I’ll see you in the morning.”

*

The elevators at Tektel Systems have buttons for two floors labeled ‘garage’. The bottommost of these two levels requires a keycard to access; any curious visitor would be told that this is executive parking for the company’s top brass, and also a secure storage area where prototype computer systems are kept locked away from the eyes of greedy competitors.

Really, the cover story is only half a lie: there is no executive parking level… however, the space _is_ given over to secure storage of a very particular type.

(The topmost garage is really just a garage.)

*

His name is Alonzo Salinas, but he doesn’t answer to that anymore. He insists that his name is Ajax, and he won’t respond to anything else.

Of course, even when he does respond, he doesn’t say much. Unlike the Institute operatives who were placed in the field, or sent out on occasion to perform atrocities in the name of _rehabilitation_ , thereby becoming vulnerable to capture and coercion, Salinas – Ajax – was never ‘coded.’ His continued existence doesn’t depend on hearing a specific pass-phrase recited every five or fourteen or twenty-one days. However, he is still ‘triggered,’ brainwashed into utter obedience, unable to disobey his absent mistress even if he were so inclined. To go against her commands – which must have been vague but remain effective – he would drop dead of a massive, spontaneous, inexplicable aneurysm.

Of the twenty-three Institute operatives that SHIELD had recovered, either from the Colombian facility itself or from locales throughout North and Central America, seven had died in this fashion.

Their names and locations had been listed in Sloane Fisher’s files, which she had offered to decrypt during her brief time in SHIELD custody. The files had been unlocked and read; the operatives – those not on site in Villavicencio – had been recovered, taken into custody at the nearest headquarters or safehouse.

And seven had still died. The files had been incomplete, the codes existing somewhere else… if they existed anywhere but in Fisher’s memory. The rest had been saved through the hasty administration of their personal antidotes, which had negated the command Fisher had implanted instructing the subject’s brain to destroy itself.

If Romanoff had been coded – and there was nothing in the files to say she had been, but no reason to believe Fisher wouldn’t have taken this precaution – then the mechanism had been rendered null and void after Barton and Rogers had injected her with the now-infamous 13A-10R. That had been a risk, but a prescient one. Eventually Romanoff’s internal timer must have ticked down to zero, telling her brain to short-circuit… but the command had never been received.

At least that was their best guess. How terrible must it be, Maria thinks – stepping into the elevator, pressing the G2 button, and sliding her key card – not to be able to trust your own brain? Or, conversely, to have no recourse _except_ to trust it and just… just hope for the best?

As far as they can tell, Ajax rarely left Fisher’s sight. He was her muscle and her sex toy, and coding him must have seemed like an unnecessary provision, considering that she had already brainwashed him into submission.

Unfortunately, no antidote created for Alonzo Salinas had ever been located in the Villavicencio facility. Maybe Fisher had destroyed it long ago. Maybe it never existed in the first place because she considered him disposable.

Maria steps from the elevator, presents her credentials at the security station, submits to three different identity checks, and continues.

Alonzo-Ajax has already been brought to an interrogation cell when she arrives. It’s a larger space than Maria’s office, although just as windowless. As in the room upstairs there are two chairs, although one of them is fitted with heavy-duty manacles. This is not a feature in any of Maria’s furniture, although after dealing with Park she finds herself reconsidering the oversight.

“You again,” says Ajax.

“Me again,” agrees Maria.

The man is smaller and paler than when he was brought in a month ago, although this is not a sign of mistreatment. While it’s understandable that he has lost a little color, being so far from the sultry Central American sun, he is afforded two hours of exercise every day. So far he has chosen not to utilize any of the weight-lifting or strength-training equipment in the subterranean gym, and as a result he has lost muscle mass. His short black hair has started to grow shaggy, as well, but the scar across his face will forever render him immediately identifiable.

Barton gave him that scar, Maria remembers. Culiacán, 2005. Salinas’ cartel bosses had sent him and a few friends to the estate of a rival drug lord named Vega, to blow up some buildings and steal some product, with specific directions to target the kingpin’s family.

Barton had been in Culiacán with a team to run surveillance on Vega for another reason entirely – intelligence that he was working with South American terrorist organizations interested in moving bio-weapons – and taking out Salinas had blown their cover.

Barton had never apologized, and Fury had never asked him to.

“Lycaon,” says Maria, by way of an opening.

Ajax sighs, leaning forward. The manacles around his wrist clink against the chair. “I told you, I don’t know who he is. None of us ever actually _saw_ him.”

“Did you see someone claiming to represent him?”

“I was told not to discuss sensitive information with outsiders. What are you trying to do, kill me?”

Maria shrugs. “I was just thinking that you might be worried.”

Ajax gives a bull-like snort. “You know what? I _am_ worried. I’m worried about being bored out of my mind. I’m worried that the food here tastes like shit. I’m worried about my roommate thinking he wants to go to the next level of our relationship because then I’m gonna have to kill him. But I’m not worried about you, baby. If you _putas_ had the stones to try to torture information out of me, you would have done it already. But you’re not going to because you don’t want a dead body on your hands.”

“You’re right,” says Maria. She’s sitting, legs crossed, hands folded in her lap. “You don’t have any reason to be afraid of me. Or of Director Fury, for that matter. You’re a small fish, and he’s bored with you. But I thought that you might still be concerned about this person that Sloane Fisher called Lycaon.”

Ajax’s brow furrows. “Why would I? He’s on my side, bitch.”

Maria nods slowly. “And yet you’re still down here, with bad food and a not-so-secret-admirer, while Dr. Fisher and Kamala Manesh continue to roam free. Be honest… that pisses you off a little, doesn’t it?”

The man’s hands tighten into fists below the manacles. The chains rattle, a reminder and a warning. “Like you said,” he replies through clenched teeth, “I’m a small fish. Never thought otherwise.”

“And this Lycaon,” Maria continues, “knows that you’re down here. I mean, if he really does work for SHIELD. If he has any reason to think you might be able to identify him, or give us information that leads to us identifying him… you could be in some trouble.”

Ajax looks at her dumbly. “I can’t tell you anything,” he says. “Not even if I wanted to. Which I don’t, but it doesn’t matter. I do, I’m dead anyway.”

“You know that,” Maria says. “And I know that. But maybe Lycaon doesn’t. Maybe it’s something that never made it into the official file.”

She’s bluffing, of course. Fisher’s tactics are common knowledge; Ben Park, for one, is surely aware of them. But deep in this sunless hole, with nothing but memories and anger to sustain him, she’s counting on Ajax’s riddled mind to work up some good, healthy paranoia.

He stares at her, lip curling. “I can’t tell you anything.”

Maria shrugs and stands. “Maybe not. But maybe there’s a little give in that leash. I’ll come see you tomorrow, Alonzo. We’ll talk again.”

 

(18)

Compared to the pockmarked and toad-ugly Artemiev, Ansel DeGrasse is a prince.

The Frenchman is tall, well-built but without the over-defined musculature of a gym rat. His healthy tan and clean, strong hands with their well-shaped nails suggest that he takes pride in his appearance, while the touch of gray at the temples of his chestnut-brown hair promises that he is not overly vain. In fact, his only unfortunate feature are his brilliantly green eyes which, combined with his habit of blinking rather slowly, give some aspects of his face a vaguely reptilian quality.

Contacts, thinks Sloane, considering the challenge. Brown eyes, to match his hair. And some therapy for that blinking issue.

DeGrasse’s manners are also beyond reproach; he is what might have been called, in a more civilized era, _gentlemanly_.With very little in the way of behavior and personality modification, Sloane decides, he might prove to be a worthy successor to Ajax and, more recently, to Jason.

Or even to poor dead Bruno. Sloane, having worked hard for her first husband – and equally hard for a permanent separation – is in no great rush to enter back into matrimony, but DeGrasse has undeniable potential.

Though never less than exceptionally polite, he seems aware of her admittedly unprofessional interest. In the past, he had never entered the old Institute without his bodyguard, Keyes – Keyes, just one name, like Madonna or Cher – and always graciously declined any offer of food or drink. Now, even though he has reaffirmed their friendship by helping her rebuild, by coming in person to tour the new facility, he maintains his careful ways.

Sloane isn’t offended by his suspicion. She appreciates a man who keeps his wits about him. Besides, if she wanted to get to DeGrasse, she wouldn’t do something as gauche as put a sedative in his coffee right here in her own facility… she would give the task to an intermediary, someone who wouldn’t – _couldn’t_ – implicate her.

Kamala would be ideal, if she wasn’t already on assignment out in the Land of Enchantment, but Keyes is also a possibility. His dark brown skin, lumpish nose, and five-plus decades don’t appeal to Sloane aesthetically, but he has the capable, gimlet-eyed silence that she appreciates in a potential operative. And, under the right circumstances, surely he would find it difficult to refuse refreshments.

Otherwise, there’s always the old standby: Jason with a hypodermic needle.

“Good. Very good.”

The best thing about DeGrasse is his lack of puerile fascination with the seven year old girl, which would have been a serious impediment to any future relationship. Instead his interest appears purely scientific. “She’s small,” he continues. “But that isn’t necessarily a drawback. Physical size is a poor indicator of lethality, when you come right down to it.” He leans towards Sloane and adds, in a stage whisper, “But don’t tell Keyes I said so. He might get the wrong idea.”

Keyes, standing well within earshot at the door of the girl’s room, gives no indication that he’s in danger of getting the wrong idea, or indeed any idea at all.

“You realize,” says Sloane tactfully, “that the physical training is going to have to be done off-site. I don’t have the expertise or the resources for that kind of thing here.”

DeGrasse’s smile is all warm understanding. “Naturally, Doctor. We have our own subcontractors lined up for that aspect. Of course, they have certain expectations as to what they’ll be getting.”

The girl: dressed in sky blue pajamas and white socks, as though she’s attending a sleepover.

“I hope you’ve put any fears they might have to rest, Mr. DeGrasse.”

“I hardly needed to. Your reputation speaks for itself. They were quite delighted, as well, to hear that the base material is coming from such an excellent source. Christopher Artemiev is still something of a legend in certain circles. Imagine the stories he could tell, the books he could write. Bestsellers all, and a fortune in royalties. Of course, it would be hard to enjoy those royalties in a federal prison.” He chuckles at his own witticism.

The girl: auburn hair pulled back into a messy, lopsided braid, tied back with a strip of ribbon torn from the bottom of a matching sky-blue robe.

“Keep in mind, of course, that I don’t intend on utilizing any KGB tactics,” says Sloane carefully, maintaining a pleasant smile. They have discussed all this before, but always under the cover of implication. “My methods are my own, unique but effective. I couldn’t replicate the Soviets’ Red Room program even if I wanted to.”

DeGrasse nods, his serpent-green eyes flooding with regret. “So much was lost in the Volgograd fire… it really is unfortunate,” he laments, and then a stray spark of an idea lights a more cheerful expression. “Of course, while most of the files were destroyed, there remain a handful of… living records, you could say.”

The girl: cross-legged on a plush azure rug in the center of her new room, a book of children’s nursery rhymes and folktales in her lap.

“Kamala does an admirable job,” says Sloane, “but she would make a poor subject for study, after everything she’s been through.”

DeGrasse rubs his chin. It’s a nice strong chin, with a deep cleft following the underlying fissure of the right and left jawbones. “And then there is always Ms. Romanoff,” he says, carefully noncommittal.

That name, as always, stokes a fire deep in the pit of Sloane’s stomach, as though she has eaten hot coals with a chaser of gasoline. Natasha Romanoff, who should have been her crowning achievement, had instead been a bitter disappointment. Not her downfall – no. Never that. Sloane has stumbled but not fallen, and in stumbling she has discovered higher ground, better opportunities, greater influence.

“Ms. Romanoff,” she says, lips aching with the strain of her fixed smile, “is more proof – as if it’s needed, mind you – that the Soviets’ efforts, while achieving impressive results in the short-term, ultimately did more harm than good. Romanoff’s mind has been reduced to the consistency of cheesecloth… too many drugs, too much physical abuse, too much… remaking.”

_Blink, blink,_ go the slow lizard eyes. “I’ve done a fair bit of reading regarding Ms. Romanoff. She’s had the same partner for more than five years, and he’s never had any complaints.”

“You’ve seen her,” says Sloane sharply. “What red-blooded man is going to complain about working with _that_?”

DeGrasse shrugs and nods, conceding the point.

The girl: pajamas and socks, braid, cross-legged on the rug with the book in her lap. Not reading. Tearing out the pages, carefully and only after much consideration of the volume’s spine.

Sloane is annoyed. She isn’t made of money.

The child is not engaged in entirely wanton destruction. Every colorful page of verse she has separated from the book has been laid flat on the vinyl-tile floor, examined, and folded into impressive specimens of origami. _Ring Around the Rosy_ is an exquisite paper flower. _This is the House that Jack Built_ has been transformed into a miniature cow with a decidedly crumpled horn. Now _Who Killed Cock Robin_ is being repurposed as a classic crane.

Patience. Focus. Attention to detail. These are positive qualities that DeGrasse’s associates will want to see enhanced.

“Speaking of Romanoff’s partner,” Sloane continues, turning her back on the girl, “there have been some interesting developments.”

“New Mexico?” DeGrasse laughs, glancing at Keyes. “Yes, last night was a lovely mess, wasn’t it? I thought of you when I heard… how _upset_ you would have been if Barton’s brains had been splattered across that Godforsaken little town.”

“You’re being sarcastic,” says Sloane. “But, in fact, it would have been a terrible loss.”

“Really?” _Blink, blink_ , dubious and serpentine. “What interest do you have in Barton?”

“You said it yourself,” Sloane tells him. “His brain.”


	6. Part Six

** PART SIX **

 

_“Words strain,_   
_Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,_   
_Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,_   
_Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,_   
_Will not stay still.”_

_\- T.S. Eliot_

(Before: 2004)

_Anya cleans herself up, steps over the dead man, and walks back out onto the main deck._

_Other passengers, those who saw her retire into the yacht’s cabin with Kutaiba half an hour ago, smile knowingly at the sight of her. One woman leans over as Anya approaches the bar and whispers, “That was fast.”_

_“The poor baby is tired out,” Anya says, grinning wickedly, and she orders a martini._

_The legal drinking age in the UAE is 21, and Anya is only 18. Sometimes she is a bad girl._

_*_

_They dock in Abu Dhabi just after midnight. Kutaiba has not been discovered. Security on his father’s pleasure craft is lax… after all, the young heir only invited those individuals along who could be explicitly trusted._

_The fool._

_Anya steps onto the dock, pretends to get an important phone call which leads to a heated argument in Hindi, and slips away just as Kutaiba’s fiancée, enraged at being left behind, storms up the gangplank. Her horrified screams follow Anya into the night._

_Kutaiba the younger had not known how to access his father’s safe._

_Anya hopes that Natalia has had better luck with his sister._

_*_

_When they come for Anya, hands reaching out of the darkness, she is briefly stunned._

_They are not Emirati. They do not even seem to be Arab. If anything, they appear Indian._

_She kills one. Disables two others._

_But there are five._

(Before: 2012)

_Knee drawn to her chest. Breath coming in shallow gasps. Skin chilled, covered in a thin sheen of sweat._

_But beneath her chest her heart is still beating, her lungs are still working, her skin is still whole. Somehow she survived the rampage. Somehow she isn’t dead._

_Still, Natasha shakes._

_Her mind fills with white noise that is the echo of an endless roar. She feels the deck canting beneath her. She feels the overtaxed engines groan. Words buzz in her ears like a million angry wasps._

_Amidst the drone of the furious hive: his name._

_“It’s Barton. He took out our systems.”_

_Natasha reminds herself that she’s made her peace with this moment._

_“He’s headed for the detention level.”_

_She’s accepted it._

_“Does anybody copy?”_

_She copies._

_*_

_“There’s another way, you know. You don’t have to live like this.”_

_“There’s no other way.”_

_*_

_He walks without fear._

_It’s like a game. How close can she get before he hears her, before he senses her presence?_

_Close. Just not close enough._

_*_

_“I know you’re not happy.”_

_“Is that what you know?”_

_*_

_Bow up. Elbow back. Unflinching, unhesitating._

_ Survive _ _._

_She grasps the bow’s curved limbs, steps inside his range as the arrow flies, and torques the bow down._

_Rather than loosen his grip he turns, jabbing an elbow at her face, kicking out at her legs until she’s forced to back off._

_He drives the sharp bow notch down towards her, following close when she dances out of the way. Overextended, he is not prepared for the foot that catches him in his chest._

_He staggers back, but she knows how quickly he can regain his footing. She grabs a support beam, slides beneath the grated walk, swinging up the other side even as he looks after her. Another kick, another stumble, but he never falls._

_Fall, Clint. Please, just fall._

_*_

_“I was there, once.”_

_“Where?”_

_“Where you are. On the wrong side.”_

_*_

_The second arrow, aimed at her legs, reminds Natasha that Loki doesn’t want an easy death for her, and the venom of the bastard’s vile oaths pumps through her veins._

_Another support, another swing; the arrow goes wide but she imagines she can feel its passage, the stir of air off the fletched shaft. He pursues her to the parallel walk, once again using the heft of the solid recurve bow as a weapon in its own right. He’s expecting her to get in close again, within his reach, but she hangs back. Waiting._

_Waiting for something. A miracle. _

_She’s forgotten that she doesn’t believe in those._

_*_

_“Right and wrong. Is that what they teach you?”_

_*_

_The string, taut beneath her gloved hands, is as strong as garroting wire. Wreck it, she thinks fiercely. Take away at least one of his weapons._

_The handle raps against her skull once, twice, but she hangs on. He pushes her against the railing, cold steel against the small of her back, his hands almost covering hers as they kick and flail and struggle for possession of the bow. She yanks one hand free, pulling it back, cracking her elbow against the side of his head._

_It could have knocked him out. It should have stunned him, at least. It doesn’t, but his grip loosens for the briefest instant._

_It’s enough._

_Now she has the bow. But he has a knife._

_*_

_“Zhizn' prozhit' — ne pole pereyti_.”

_“Maybe not. But it can be better than this.”_

_*_

_The blade is in his right hand, arcing down; she blocks him, kicks, tries to knock him off his feet, but he’s too well balanced. Another slice, another block, but this time she forces his arm back, wrenching it at an unnatural angle, trying to ignore his strangled sound of pain._

_Survive._

_And then the knife is in his left hand, parting the air above her head as she ducks without conscious thought. _

_They grapple for the blade, his quiver nearly swinging into her face. No beauty in this dance now, no grace, just power, and fear pushes the blade away, away, until it is resting just below his chin._

_One good thrust will part flesh and sinew. Warm blood will gush across her hands. He will fall and she will live and it will be done._

_Survive._

_ Survive _ _._

_*_

_“Dolg platezhom krasen.”_

_“You don’t owe me anything.”_

_*_

_She hesitates and the chance is lost. His free hand snares a fistful of her hair, pulling it until her eyes water, forcing her head back and weakening her grip. She can’t see the knife but she can feel its descent, slow and inexorable, as though the steel is a living thing, straining, seeking the blood that it was denied._

_Her blood._

_His arm drops, drops, and the knife drops with it, but every part of her body is a weapon, so she thrusts her head forward, past the blade, and sinks her teeth into his skin._

_He bellows like a wounded animal and the knife clatters from his hand, but he has the presence of mind to continue forward, his arm snaking around her waist, intending to drive her down; she hooks her hand around his shoulder and flips up and out of his grasp._

_Now he is profoundly unbalanced, bent at the waist with momentum tipping him forward, and she’s afraid the knife might be down there within his sight, within his reach. The only weapons left to her are the floor and the railing, so she yanks him into a tight turn; his hands come up to soften the blow but not quickly enough, and his skull meets the handrail with a horrible, solid crack that she can feel in her teeth._

_He stumbles, groaning. Falters. Tries to pull himself back up. Can’t._

_She watches, expecting a trick, a feint, as he manages to rise up on one knee._

_His eyes find hers; they are not full of wild fury, but they are still a shade found nowhere in nature._

_“Natasha?”_

_His voice. His voice._

_Better safe than sorry, she decides._

(19)

Wedged in between crates of whole and two-percent, beginning to shiver as the cold settles into his bones, Clint rocks westward.

All things considered, the back of a refrigerated truck is not the worst way to cross the high desert of western New Mexico. Riding along with a shipment of milk likely destined for Albuquerque means that the space is kept chilled but above freezing, which minimizes the chance that he’ll die of hypothermia before the truck makes its first scheduled stop. That’s a plus.

He tries to pretend that what he’s doing is the very definition of logic, but he can’t quite manage to convince himself. He is a man possessed, and possession is the bane of reason.

For a long time he simply listens to the steady thrum of rubber on asphalt, wishing his overnight bag had included his Gore-Tex parka or at least thick socks, hunkering down so that any unexpected stops or sharp turns won’t lead to injury.

He wonders what he will do if the truck suddenly halts in response to the arrival of, say, a large blond man wielding a hammer.

Clint figures chances are good that the big guys will come after him, not out of concern for his well-being or Natasha’s but because Steve will feel obligated and Stark will be eager to protect his brand, because Banner will take the confrontation personally and Thor… well, at this point _he’ll_ be eager to do something besides planetary delousing.

Aten, on the other hand, will be long gone, glad to see the back of him. By now she’s probably escaped, putting plenty of distance between herself and Banner… or else she’s come up with some clever cover story, leaving the others unsure of who to believe.

Clint doesn’t blame them for that. Stark, Banner, Steve, Thor… none of them could have picked _him_ out of a lineup before New York; they have no reason to trust his word, especially when his word is admittedly unbelievable. And only Stark’s known Natasha for more than a couple of months, so Clint certainly can’t fault them for not realizing the truth when _he_ , who has been her partner for more than five years, never once suspected until this morning.

_Why? How did I not see?_

The truck’s cargo hold is dark; the bands of florescent overhead lights will shine only when the back doors are opened. The blackness is perfect, unrelieved, but when Clint closes his eyes, sparks and spots of transient color flash across his lids. He sees other things as well: images of the past month, vivid and wonderful and terrible.

*

_Their second day in Frankfurt is spent mostly apart, as she makes herself a target and he watches from the rooftops. Her hair is a bright banner, catching fire in the sunlight. As day turns to evening, heavy and humid with the promise of another summer storm, all he can see is her._

_He hears the shower running as he enters the apartment, sets a new land-speed record for undressing, and steps into the glass-paneled cubical behind her._

_She leans against his chest as he trails his lips down her neck, her head falling back onto his shoulder as his hands slide up and cup her breasts. “I’ve been thinking about this all day,” he confesses._

_“All… day?” Her voice catches as he moves one hand down between her legs. “Good thing no one… oh, God, Clint… no one took a shot at me.”_

_He grins as she bends one knee, finding a toehold on a narrow ledge meant for soap and little bottles of shampoo, and leans forward with her hands braced beneath the showerhead. The water sluices down over her back and the steam rises, filling the negative space between them. “Baby, no one gets to take a shot at you but me.”_

_He fits himself to her and she groans, not only in desire but – he expects – in reaction to the diminutive. “No ‘baby’?” he asks, both hands moving to grasp her hips._

_“No ‘baby’,” she agrees, but she’s almost laughing, and then he begins to move and the laughter turns to something else._

*

It isn’t the memories of the sex that cause him the most grief; it’s the memories of the things he _felt_.

*

_In the bed, atop the dampened sheets with one towel between them, cocooned in the warming scents of sex and citrus body wash, they talk. Most of it is nonsense – he thinks that neither of them have had enough nonsense in their lives – but somehow the conversation returns to pet names. And to the past._

_The year he’d turned thirteen, a woman had joined Carson’s Traveling Carnival. When the gates opened, she was Madame Zelda, Fortune Teller and Prophetess, but the rest of the time she was only Oksana, a thirty-five year old immigrant from Moscow who could pull off a passable Romani accent. One of the roughies, Oleg, the son of Ukrainian ex-pats, had spent half the season attempting to court her. It had been obvious even to Clint that she had liked him, but was infuriated by his constant use of endearments: baby, honey, sugar, doll. “I am not a child, and I am not sweet,” she had exclaimed, exasperated, one night after the marks had all gone home with their wallets considerably lightened. “If you wish to compliment me, do it accurately.”_

_“Sunshine!” Oleg had blurted, first in Russian and then in English, flushing as some of the other men laughed derisively. “Because… because the sun’s light is bright and hot and deadly, but without it I could not live.”_

_Oksana and Oleg had gotten married – real-married, not just carny-married – at the end of the season. A few years later they had left the carnival life altogether. Clint had missed them._

_Loose-limbed and heavy-lidded, Natasha curls against him, trailing her fingers down his jaw. “Sunshine, hmm?” she asks, chuckling drowsily. “Is that what I am?”_

_Her fingers move across his lips and he kisses them; because these things always sound better in Russian he says, “solnyshko moyo,” remembering the sight of her hair in the blazing sun, and she smiles as she succumbs to sleep._

*

Pain in his chest, in his head: undiminished by the cold, unrelieved by the dark.

Maybe Aten had been instructed to seduce him, or maybe that had been a little bonus, a personal mission while she completed whatever objective Fisher had set her to complete. A man might be able to excuse himself for falling into bed with a woman like her, even if she had been a stranger. Especially if she had been a stranger.

The things that he told her, though – stories of his childhood, the ghosts that haunt him, those tentative half-formed plans for the future – are more of a violation than any designs she had on his body. The way she had so easily drawn those words from him – _Natasha, I love you_ – is a gross insult to the woman he’s loved for years, secretly, silently and without acknowledgement. It lessens everything he’s felt for her, even before he accepted that what he was feeling was real.

It makes him weak and foolish and _unfaithful_.

_Solnyshko moyo…_

The moment he finds Natasha, the _real_ Natasha, the second he looks into her eyes, he won’t even have to tell her. She’ll look at him and she’ll know that he betrayed her, that he was lulled into complacency by this impostor’s body, that he shared with _her_ all the things that should have never belonged to anyone else.

And she’ll never come out and say that she hates him for it. But she will. Deep down, she will.

The truck continues west. Every mile that passes beneath him holds the fear at bay, but it never leaves completely, and the gargoyles of anger and regret and self-loathing seem to leer down at him from the lightless interior of the truck. He chafes his bare arms and listens to the steady thrum of rubber on asphalt until he can no longer feel the dampness on his numb skin.

 

(20)

“Park?” asks Steve, watching both the elevator’s indicator board and Maria Hill’s face. “I don’t think I know him.”

“He’s Internal Affairs,” says Maria – as she’s dressed once more in denim and leather, her hair pulled back into a short ponytail, he can’t possibly think of her as anything as staid as _Agent Hill_ – “and he’s after Fury. Which means that the Council – or at least a _faction_ on the council – is after Fury.”

Steve considers this. The director will forever be tainted in Steve’s eyes by his commitment to Phase Two and his complete unwillingness to respect the power of the Tesseract, but a regime change within SHIELD is definitely not on Steve’s agenda right now.

Maria hesitates, tilting her face towards the steadily ascending numbers. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. This is Stark’s turf.”

“It’s my turf now too,” Steve replies, wishing he felt as confident as he sounds. “Besides, we need you. You know how Barton thinks.”

“You’re giving me way too much credit on that count. We’ve worked together, that’s all. Agent Romanoff…”

“Is in New Mexico,” says Steve. “And she’s…” _Not thinking especially clearly. Ready to kill somebody. More so than usual._ “She’s… upset.”

The elevator cab stops and the doors open. Tony Stark turns from his bank of computers, stares, and scowls. “Rogers! What the hell is she doing here?”

“She’s not the only one,” mutters Maria.

*

Steve has to give Tony credit: the guy can multitask.

At the moment he’s engaged in a heated ‘instant message’ conversation with Pepper Potts, who is in Los Angeles on some urgent business matter, bickering face-to-face with Maria, and hacking into Ashmore General’s secure server. Although, to be fair, JARVIS is doing most of the actual hacking.

“Now, Agent Hill, when you say _illegal…_ ”

“I actually do mean illegal, yes.”

Tony’s pained expression is one not seen since the days of Torquemada’s torture chambers. “Cap, I thought you said you were going to help. This is not helping.”

Maria stiffens. “I’m sorry if I’m cramping your style by pointing out…”

“Nothing that I don’t already know.” A lazy flick of Stark’s wrist sends the server-hacking program sliding across the room, where a box reading _100%_ expands, opening like a window in midair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m trying to possibly save a life here.”

Somehow, even when uninflected, Maria’s voice manages to convey deep and abiding scorn. “Of course you are, Mr. Stark.”

 _She sounds like me,_ thinks Steve. Or _rather, I used to sound like her._ Strange, to hear those sentiments coming out of another person’s mouth, and agreeing with them, but at the same time… not. And it isn’t as though he considers Tony Stark a completely reformed character, or even marginally less of an insufferable glory-hound, but underneath the pomp and bluster there is… something else. Something better, maybe, than even Tony wants to admit.

Having been charged with being a good man – seventy-plus years ago, a _lifetime_ ago – Steve knows how difficult it can be to try to live up to high expectations.

The billionaire types a brief response to Ms. Potts on a ghostly impression of a keyboard and swivels in his chair, towards the holographic window, his back to Maria. “Brucie, you two seeing this?”

“Uh, that’s an affirmative,” replies Banner’s voice, coming from everywhere and nowhere. He and Natasha are viewing the same video on his cell phone. “Hard to see much detail, but we’ll do what we can. The ambulance brought him in a few minutes before seven-thirty… let’s start there.”

“You’re the boss,” says Tony, and the time-code flashes across the bottom of the screen, which is divided into quadrants, each with their own simultaneous black-and-white feed.

The top-right display shows a few yards of speckled linoleum that Steve guesses is the entrance to the emergency room, as well as two transparent doors and a wedge of dark-gray night beyond. Then: the monochrome flutter-flash of strobe lights, the doors sliding open, a wheeled gurney conveying a figure strapped to a backboard, head immobilized in a vise-like collar. A second later, stumbling in their fleet-footed wake is Banner, shirtless and shoeless, looking like someone surfacing from a night of heavy drinking to find the entire weekend has passed in a raucous bacchanalia.

Maria frowns, crossing her arms, sharp eyes cutting across the screen. “What exactly are we looking for?”

“Honestly… I’m not sure,” Banner replies. “Call it a hunch. Wait… who said that?”

“This is Agent Hill, Doctor.”

For the first time Steve hears Natasha’s voice, curt and clipped with frustration. “What is _she_ doing there?”

“My question exactly,” grumbles Tony, still tracking movement across the screen. The medics and the gurney and Banner pass out of frame quickly; there is nothing remarkable about the moment, but he continues to watch.

Steve sighs. “Listen, we’re looking for a needle in a haystack.” _And at the moment it’s a hay-colored needle that also happens to be made of hay. _And then there is the matter of this troublesome Agent Park, but he’s not going to bring that up now. Natasha doesn’t need another reason to distrust SHIELD personnel and Tony doesn’t need another target for his acid tongue. “I thought we could use another set of eyes.”

Tony huffs. “We don’t need eyes. We have JARVIS.”

“You flatter me, sir, but in terms of search parameters, ‘a hunch’ is so vague as to be entirely useless.”

“Well, buddy, you’re definitely more useful than a—”

“ _Stop_.”

Hill’s curt tone almost makes Steve jump, and at first he thinks she’s addressing him and Tony and maybe even the AI, but her eyes are still on the screen and her brow is furrowed in concentration. She points to the bottom-left quadrant of the feed, and Tony wordlessly gestures so that it fills up the entire window, so that the colorless image is larger and clearer than before.

“Go back,” says Hill, her expression troubled. “A few seconds. I thought I saw…” She lets the sentence trail away unfinished, and her eyes find Steve’s.

This camera is aimed at a small, auxiliary entrance, perhaps one frequented by employees, because the woman who passes into the picture a moment later is dressed in shapeless nonsurgical scrubs, a large purse over one shoulder. She pauses before passing over the threshold, looks back into the darkness beyond the frame, and then continues.

She is only on camera for three, maybe five seconds.

“JARVIS…”

The AI might find Banner’s hunches insufficient as search parameters, but certainly by now it has learned to read its maker’s mind: the picture expands, clarifies, narrowing to the woman, zeroing in on her face. Short, dark hair. High cheekbones. Full lips. Tony glances questioningly at Maria. “We can run this against the SHIELD database…”

“There’s no need,” says Steve. “It’s Kamala Manesh.”

*

The Farradays still work for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, but now they do so from home, rather than the field, and home is in North Platte, Nebraska, far from the machinations of third-world dictators.

North Platte is a little far for a day trip, but a quick call to the husband reveals that the wife, providentially, is at a Commission conference in Philadelphia.

Deciding that the use of the Quinjet would cause more problems than it would solve in such a densely-populated area, loathe to waste time filing a flight plan, Steve checks the train schedule, and Maria asks if he would mind some company.

“Not at all,” he says, surprised to discover that it’s the truth.

*

He supposes that, in a corner of his mind, Paola Farraday will always be _Saja_ : the silent, trembling Witten Institute ‘intern’ who’d had the gumption and the presence of mind to drug Ajax, lead Steve through Fisher’s house of horrors, and help him find the drug that had saved Natasha’s life.

When they spoke a few days later, after Saja had been reacquainted with her name, her memories, and her husband, she had been hesitant and a little shy, still laboring under the burden of everything that had been done to her.

The past month seems to have wrought a significant change. Paola sits in an upholstered armchair, shapely legs crossed beneath a straight black skirt, drinking coffee as she peruses a paperback novel. Her brown hair is cut and curled into stylish ringlets, and when she looks up – seeming to sense their entrance into the room – she smiles broadly, sets aside book and cup, stands and approaches them with obvious pleasure in her bright blue eyes. “Captain Rogers, it’s so good to see you again.”

“It’s ‘Steve’,” insists Steve, embarrassed and a trifle concerned; the Crowne Plaza, where Paola’s conference is being held, had put aside this smaller meeting room for their use after Maria _insisted_ , but the door to the hallway is still open and the name _Captain Rogers_ is more recognizable than his face. “And it’s nice to see you again, too. You…” He decides not to mention how much better she looks, having regained some weight. Even in his day, women were pretty touchy about that sort of thing. “You seem like you’re doing well.”

“This is my first big excursion since it all happened,” she says with a little flush of pleasure. “Zach wanted to come, of course, but I told him… I have to get back out in the world, without a babysitter, or I’m always going to be afraid that there are bogeymen waiting in every shadow. I have to prove to _myself_ that I can do it. I know that sounds like bad psychotherapy, and I actually did see someone for a few weeks, but most of the time it seems that I know what I need to do to get past this… I just have to _make_ myself do it.” She pauses to catch her breath and shrugs self-consciously. “Sorry. These days sometimes I can’t _stop_ talking. I think maybe Zach was a little relieved to stay at home, just to have a few minutes of quiet. Agent Hill, I apologize, it’s very good to see you too.”

Maria shakes the other woman’s hand. “You’re planning on staying in the States, then?”

“Zach’s parents are in North Platte,” replies Paola. “He moved back to be close to them after I was… after I was taken. And we decided that if we… _when_ we decide to have a family, we would want the baby to be close to his or her grandparents.” Her eyes flicker between them. “But I know this isn’t a social call.”

She leads them back to her chair and they sit across from her on a matching sofa. Maria pulls a folder from her shoulder bag and passes it to Paola. “This is a list of names mentioned in Institute files,” she says. “Some from computer files that Fisher unlocked, but mainly from documents decrypted in the past couple of weeks.”

Paola opens the folder slowly, as though worried that the manila cardstock might conceal something fanged and venomous.

“I know you told us everything you could remember,” says Steve solicitously, leaning forward. “But we’re hoping that one of these names might ring a bell.”

Paola lifts her eyes to his. “You’ve found them, haven’t you?”

“Manesh has resurfaced,” Steve admits. “Fisher is still unaccounted for. But… we think they’re up to their old tricks.”

Brows lowered, Paola studies the list of names. Many are incomplete and several are nothing more than initials, because Fisher had been cautious even in her encrypted files. “What’s happened?” she asks tentatively, running a finger down the first column.

Steve glances at Maria, who looks unhappy but resigned with this revelation of classified material. “We think Manesh might have been involved in the recent disappearance of, ah, of Agent Barton.”

Paola looks up sharply. “Barton. You think they got to him somehow. Like they got to your Agent Romanoff? In… in retaliation?”

“We’re really not sure,” says Maria, as Steve realizes that Paola’s concern might be for her own safety, and may be well-founded. North Platte is a long way from Chavez and his cronies, as is Philadelphia, but if Manesh and Fisher are acting in the US with impunity… “All we know is that Manesh was in New Mexico last night. Do any of those names look familiar?”

Paola’s eyes return to the list and she gives a small, helpless shrug. “I… I’m really not sure. She… Fisher… she’d talk in front of me sometimes because I was just always _there_ , like part of the furniture, and obviously she wasn’t worried about me telling anyone else, but Manesh and Ajax were the only ones who were really in her confidence.” She frowns. “Have you asked Ajax? Have you shown him these names?”

“We never found an antidote for him,” says Maria sourly. “If one exists, we haven’t been able to identify it. It seemed like medications intended for the more recent operatives were all clearly marked and stored in some kind of order, but some of the originals are either missing completely or else improperly labeled. And as much as I might enjoy it, I can’t just start injecting him with everything in that room to see what works.”

Paola smiles faintly. “Dr. Witten was originally in charge of drug storage,” she said wryly, and with a sharp edge to the dead scientist’s name. “He had his own system that I don’t think anyone understood, including him. When he started spending less time at the Institute, Dr. Fisher took over. She was a lot more meticulous.”

“Ben Park,” says Maria suddenly.

Paola cocks her head. “I’m sorry… who?”

Maria looks disappointed, as though she had hoped to jar a stronger reaction from the other woman. “That name doesn’t mean anything to you? About forty, Korean, a little taller than me…”

“I don’t think so.” Paola gestures to the list of names. “All I can tell you is that several of these are names of people Fisher was interested in acquiring. Specific targets that she thought might further her own ambitions. And the list is outdated, I’m sure you noticed that,” she tells Steve.

“I noticed.” Natasha’s name is present. Barton’s is not, but it is to be expected that she would make new plans, new schemes for vengeance.

“The only one I ever saw in person who wasn’t eventually made an operative was this man,” she continues, pointing to a name halfway down the second column. “Keyes. I remember because I was never sure if that was his first name or his last. He was a big man. Quiet. South African, I believe.”

“A mercenary?”

“A… a bodyguard.”

The realization strikes her, seeming to travel outward like a sound wave, impacting Steve and Maria at the same time.

“ _Whose_ bodyguard?”

 

(21)

From Albuquerque, a milk truck and a very surprised driver, to Flagstaff, Arizona as a stowaway on an Amtrak train: his headache isn’t any worse than it was when he woke this morning, but Clint remains unreasonably convinced that the instant he stops his westward trek, the pain will return in full force.

In Flagstaff he’s forced to pause, at least for a little while, to eat and consider his next move. _West, west, west_ has echoed through his mind since New Mexico, but now that he senses his destination is drawing near, the ephemeral directions become more specific.

 _West. The lake_. _The city on the lake._

He finds it on the station map: _Lake Havasu City_ _._ The lake is actually a dammed reservoir on the Colorado River, right on the border between Arizona and California. A two-page brochure on a local tourist attraction – London Bridge – tells him more than he wants to know about the city. Established in ’63 as a “self-sufficient planned community.” Population of about 50,000, situated in the desert lowlands, isolated and hotter than hell.

 _Is that where she is?_ The isolation would appeal to Fisher, he decides, studying the map, tracing the route from Flagstaff. It feels _right_ , although he has no idea why.

He has enough cash in his bag for a bus that’ll convey him across the Mojave as far as Kingman, Arizona. “From there it’s about an hour’s drive down 40,” says the station manager, who looks like he’s spent his fair share of time in the desert sun. He could be thirty years old or sixty; it’s impossible to tell by his seamed and weathered face. “Plenty of places where you can rent a car.”

“Thanks,” says Clint, although he has no intention of doing so. Rental agencies want you to put down a credit card. They want identification. If SHIELD isn’t already helping to look for him, they will be soon, and since the only credit card he has on him is the one linked directly to Stark Industries…

He thinks longingly of his nearest cache – a well-stocked storage unit just off the Vegas strip – but it’s too far and in the wrong direction.

 _West, west, west_.

*

On the bus, he sleeps. He dreams. He remembers.

*

_Wrapped in her arms, running a careful hand through her tangled hair: “I talked to Fury. Turns out you were wrong. You told me in Paris… you said Fury wasn’t stupid enough to throw away two of his best assets.”_

*

_Her fingertips, soft against his mouth. His words: “Solnyshko moyo.” My sunshine. Silly, frivolous, but she smiles in her sleep._

*

_She wakes in a panic, trembling and grappling at the sheets as though they’re demons that have followed her up out of her nightmare. He talks her through it, speaks of birds and rooftops and nonsense, lets his voice sink through the fear before he tries to touch her._

_Then he does touch her and she abandons the sheets, clutching at him instead. “Now,” she demands, still shaking, pulling him against her, tugging away what little clothing they’ve worn to bed. “Now, Clint, please… please, I need…” and he kisses her, touches her, fills her, rocks her until she gasps and cries out, no room or time or thought left for the terror in her mind._

*

_“I can’t walk away.”_

_His fingers trace her spine. His eyes hold hers. “Natasha… I love you. I don’t expect you to… I understand. If you can’t say it right now.”_

_“What if I can’t ever say it?”_

_“You don’t have to say anything.”_

*

In the dreams, it is always indisputably Natasha. The things she knows. The way she looks at him. No one is that good of an actor. And surely an impostor would have no qualms about telling him what he so desperately wanted to hear…

And then he wakes and the pain is there again. It begins in the base of his skull and radiates out through the porous channels of his bones, across each axon linking nerve to synapse like a signal sent along a telegraph line. It is a long, piercing sound like a high-pitched train whistle; a scourge, driving the lies away.


	7. Part Seven

** PART SEVEN **

_“So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.”_

_\- T.S. Eliot_

 

(After)

I am fifteen.

My corsage is pink and my date is sweating bullets, sitting on the sofa in our apartment in Chelsea, staring down my parents and my baby sister. My mother is relaxed and gracious as she bounces Sasha on her knee, asking politely after Justin’s family and our plans for the night, playing the part of the demure housewife with such subtlety, such attention to detail, that it’s all I can do to keep a straight face. Later she will take me aside and quiz me on what I observed: _what did you notice about my posture? How might it have changed his perception of me if I had crossed my legs at the ankle, instead of the knee? What was the benefit of having Sasha there with us? What were the potential drawbacks?_

It’s hard to tell if Dad is playing a part; either way, he’s fully committed. He doesn’t actually sit in his armchair and clean a rifle with menacing thoroughness, but the thing is… he doesn’t need to. His manner is outwardly easy – he even smiles now and then – but his eyes are so hard and cold that he might as well be sitting in a shadowed corner of the room, sharpening a Bowie knife against a leather strop. When he says, “Just remember her curfew,” he’s really saying _I know all the best places to hide the bodies_. And when he looks at me, I know he’s saying _if you really like this pimply little moron, you’d better behave yourself too._

Mom takes our picture. Dad shakes Justin’s hand as we get ready to leave. It’s all so trite and clichéd and ridiculous that I think it might be the best night of my life.

 

(Before: 2008)

_“I’m just trying to understand,” says Agent Park, and he’s using that voice, the one Natasha has heard from countless psychologists and psychiatrists and assorted headshrinkers since she followed Barton out of that damned alley. _

_Gently wheedling. Faintly condescending. Vaguely paternalistic._

_There are many responses she could give, all of them sarcastic, some of them downright rude. She’s not worried about looking bad in Park’s eyes – they can take her or leave her as she is – but she doesn’t want to reflect badly on her partner. So she merely says, “I’m trying to help you understand,” when what she really wants to tell him is _You’re an arrogant little prick and I’m sick of talking to you. _“Someone else was there in the warehouse,” continues Natasha, patiently repeating this simple fact for the third time. “They must have been looking for the same information.”_

_“And you believe they planted the explosives?”_

_“Yes,” she lies, smoothly and without compunction._

_“Did you recognize this person?”_

_Now she hesitates, caught between untruthful denial and unbelievable truth. “I thought I did,” she says at last. “But I must have been wrong. The woman I’m thinking of died almost four years ago.”_

_“Died… or disappeared?” asks Park cannily._

_“Disappeared,” admits Natasha, not caring to explain that for the Red Room, disappearance was as much proof of death as a corpse, viscera, or buckets of blood._

_Four years ago, in 2004, the Soviet Union had officially been more than a decade in the ground. The KGB and their satellite programs had officially been dismantled. But power, when exercised with maximum efficacy, does not operate in official channels. Power does not fret at the turning tide of politics or weep at the fall of regimes. Power sustains itself. Power endures._

_*_

_Barton is waiting for her outside the interrogation room, and he doesn’t try to disguise his relief at her lack of security escort._

_He knows, she thinks._

_But he doesn’t want to talk about Volgograd anymore, which is perfect, because neither does she._

_“You want to get out of here?” he asks. “I figure we’ve got a couple of days at least.”_

_She looks at him quizzically. “Where are we going?”_

_He takes half a step back, regarding her as might a tailor taking mental measurements. She knows he has boltholes, places unknown to SHIELD, all over the country: Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas…_

_“Ohio,” he says, pitching his voice low, smiling at some secret joke. “Let’s go to Ohio.”_

_*_

_The trailer, dusty from disuse, sits on the edge of a sprawling campground. It has been a mild autumn and the main entrance looks busy, but they don’t use the main entrance. He shows her the route overland from the access road – “Just in case you ever need to come here yourself.”_

_Natasha can’t imagine ever coming here on her own – she can’t imagine coming here again, period – but after a day has passed she admits that there is something to be said for outdoor living. The smells of birch and hawthorn and wet earth are an improvement over the blood and soot and smoke of Volgograd._

_They flip a coin and she wins the bed while he is relegated to the sofa. The first night, with the folding door closed between them, she slits a hole in the underside of the mattress and slips the computer drive in amongst the Bonnell coils and block foam. A few quick stitches hide all evidence of this careful destruction._

_Let them think that everything in Volgograd was lost. Let them blame Anya, or the ghost of Anya. Hell, let them blame Natasha; in the end, it doesn’t matter._

_Power sustains itself. Power endures._

_But power also burns like a son of a bitch._

 

(Before: 2012)

_As he pulls against the pressure at his wrists, nonsense words dribble from his lips, his tongue, madness that washes like flotsam across the surface of his mind, as frenetic as calliope music, as crazed as the wide rolling eye of a painted horse._

_“Clint. You’re going to be all right.”_

_She is there: quiet, steady; an impossibility of red and black. Blood and steel. Sunset and midnight._

_“You know that I do.”_

_Every sound seems magnified in the small infirmary cell, or maybe it is his own senses that are hyperaware: the steady hum of the engines thrumming through the deck… the liquid song of water poured from carafe to cup… the creak of the restraints as she frees his arms._

_“Don’t. Don’t do that to yourself, Clint.”_

_He wants to believe her, to let her words lay against his skin like balm, but it’s hard. It’s hard just to look at her, because behind words meant to comfort stands the shade of an old, deep pain made new again. A shade cast by the voice he knew as God’s – “Tell me everything about them” – and by the words of his own reply._

_Natasha’s fears aren’t so different from other peoples’ – betrayal, loss – but they go beyond what almost anyone else has experienced. Not the betrayal of another: betrayal of oneself. Not loss to death: loss to memory._

_“Now you sound like you.”_

_It wasn’t his choice, what happened to him – God knows it wasn’t – but through Loki’s actions he’s broken the only promise he’s ever made to her, the only promise that ever meant a damn thing: to never be her enemy._

_She sits beside him, although they don’t quite touch, and the shadows in her eyes are fuel to a fire she doesn’t let anyone else see._

_“I’ve been compromised.”_

_He looks away from the fire, down at his hands and then at hers, resting palm up in her lap. Faint red lines score the exposed flesh below her gauntlets, especially the pads of her fingers. They are lines he knows, lines he has grown calluses against, and these injuries are at most only a few hours old._

_He had tried to kill her. Would have killed her. Would have happily bathed in her blood if his dark God had told him to._

_She follows his gaze and turns her hands palms-down without comment, preferring – in this instance – to deflect rather than confront. “We should get that cleaned up,” she says, nodding down at his left arm._

_The wound has broken the skin, but it is so small as to have escaped his notice before now. The distinctive shape teases a ghost of a smile from him as she stands, walking to the cupboard where basic first aid supplies are kept._

_She bit me, he remembers, his amusement welling up, so abruptly out of proportion that he seems he must be teetering on the edge of hysteria. He finds words again – foolish words, nonsense words – spoken through parched lips, shaped with a fumbling tongue. “Coulson swears you’re going to end up breaking my neck some day, but he never mentioned…”_

_At the sound of the name she freezes, coming to an uneasy halt before him, antiseptic and sterile gauze in hand. He looks up at her, sees her lips parted, brows drawn down… and he knows._

_He turns his head away._

_The words are spoken in less than a whisper, hardly more than a breath; he doesn’t want to ask the question, doesn’t want to know the answer, but he has to know or he’ll go insane, right here, right now._

_“Was it me?”_

_She sets down the bottle and the gauze, leaving her hands empty, strong fingers curling into impotent fists. “No.” Her own voice: a murmur, barely distinguishable from the sibilant rush of piped-in air. “Looks like it was Loki.”_

_If it was Loki, Clint tries to say, then it was me._

_I set him free—_

_I did it—_

_It’s my fault—_

_Because of me—_

_But these accusations, these confessions, are still bottled up inside him and audible only in his own mind; the room is quiet but for his own shaky breaths, air forced out through his nose because his lips are pressed so tightly together. If he opens his mouth, he might scream._

_He remembers Coulson’s voice, his face giving new meaning to the word ‘deadpan’: “Just remember, parents get the kids they deserve.”_

_So what did you do to deserve us, Phil?_

_Clint’s vision swims and he closes his eyes, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and he feels his forehead bump against something: Natasha’s hip, solid and cool against his flushed skin._

_Her hand comes up – slowly, with great hesitation – and rests tentatively on the nape of his neck, cradling the base of his skull as he leans his head against her, searching for that place where shadows become fuel and grief becomes vengeance._

_They don’t touch. Except when they do._

 

(22)

After Albuquerque she loses track of Barton, but it doesn’t matter. Kamala knows where he’s going because it’s where she told him to go.

*

Dr. Fisher – duplicitous bitch that she is – has been far from idle since her liberation. The new facility on the state line is not yet up to the aesthetic standards of the old Villavicencio Institute, but they have had little time to devote to interior decorating. Most of Fisher’s time, at least, has been spent devoted to the objectives of her rescuer and patron, the man they know only as Lycaon, whose interests are represented by Ansel DeGrasse.

Ultimately, Lycaon wants his own Natasha Romanoff, a custom-made Black Widow. A subject has been procured through a reliable supplier, a man known to do business with the original Red Room project. Fisher’s talents will be bent towards the aim of programming the child to be both submissive to her handlers and deadly to her enemies… not an easy task.

The second thing Lycaon and DeGrasse want is, naturally, a quick fix. No one wants to put in the time and effort to have their enemies’ memories wiped and characters manipulated these days. No, they want a magic pill, the quick squirt of a syringe, and all of their problems solved.

Of course it isn’t that easy. Complex ideas can not be contained in a gelatin capsule. Drastic changes in personality cannot be effected by waving a needle like a magic wand. Needles and pills can help, of course, but the human brain is like a diamond that cannot be cut by any lesser stone.

Kamala was told that she had come to the Institute fragile, damaged, and maybe even a bit insane from her treatment at the hands of the Indian government. Fisher and Witten had wiped her clean and attempted to fill in the blanks, not through the labor-intensive process of building memories from the ground-up but by seeding a few ideas and letting them grow in her mind.

Some might say that the process had worked too well. The fire in Kolar, the man in Brasilia, are all self-concocted inventions to help explain why she is who she is.

Likewise, an injection into a convenient port on Barton’s IV line had given Kamala brief access to his unconscious mind, rendering him vulnerable to suggestion. The trick was making that suggestion simple enough that, conscious, he wouldn’t be able to identify it as foreign, while also making it specific enough to serve their purpose.

“Emotion,” Fisher had told her, as Kamala had prepared to leave for New Mexico. “Emotion is the key.”

_Danger. There is danger. Go west. You’ll be safe in the west, in the city by the lake._

*

They’d gotten word of the trouble in Puento Antiguo only a couple of hours before Stark and his team of misfits had arrived on the scene; over the phone, Fisher had declared Barton’s injury and subsequent hospitalization “absolutely providential.”

It wasn’t providence, Kamala had wanted to tell her. Providence is just a fancy word for God, and there is no such thing. There is only the dumb clockwork movement of the universe, the way things must be according to rules governing attraction and entropy and subatomic particles, the fate that comes written on every stitch and seam of reality.

But she does not speak to Dr. Fisher of fate. She does not want the doctor to decide that she is, after all, insane, and to replace her like she replaced Ajax.

*

She reacquires Barton in Kingman just after 4 o’clock local time.

It’s a risk, having him out of her sight for so long. He might have hitchhiked or stowed away, as he had in Ashmore. He might have driven, as she had, and beaten her to Havasu. But her instincts are good and fate is cooperative, and she sees him disembark from a bus at an Amtrak station, eyes bleary and oddly haunted, jeans and jacket rumpled, his only luggage the black duffle taken off the Quinjet the night before. A greasy bag of takeout from a restaurant across the street serves as a quick early dinner, and then he walks boldly into the station’s long-term parking garage.

Fifteen minutes later he drives out behind the wheel of a newer-model Jeep Cherokee 4x4, and Kamala clucks disapprovingly at this wanton disregard for property rights.

She pulls her own Institute vehicle – a nondescript Hyundai four-door – out into traffic and then back on the freeway; she wants to make sure she’s not in sight when Barton turns off Interstate 40 onto the less-traveled Route 95.

Besides, it isn’t as though she needs to watch him, or even tap into the audio feed still broadcasting from his bugged duffle. The fact that he’s come all this way, alone and with such tenacity, is proof that he really believes in this fiction he has created. Deep inside he knows, _knows,_ that his precious Natasha is in danger and his only possible course of action is to _rescue_ her.

Disgusting, really, but that’s what came of letting the mind write its own script. It was inevitably drawn to emotion, and here was a man who was obviously already doing most of his thinking with an organ other than his brain.

 

(23)

The turnoff for Lake Havasu City puts him on a course more southerly than westerly, but this seems acceptable to his fevered mind. Now that he has a more focused destination, Clint is no longer compelled to simply follow the course of the sun.

And the sun is low now, less than an hour from setting. The dust-tinted sky – red and orange, shading to purple in the east – gives the landscape an eerie cast. The Mojave has a bleak, threatening sort of beauty in this light: rocky bluffs loom menacingly, casting charred shadows across the asphalt, mesquite bristles along the roadside, and Joshua trees raise their knobby limbs, like arthritic fists, into the air.

He’s been trying to think through his next steps since Kingman, but his brain stubbornly refuses to coalesce around a coherent thought. Despite his uneasy sleep on the bus he’s running on little more than adrenaline, driven by fear and self-loathing as surely as he had ever been spurred along under Loki’s control.

This idea stuns him, shakes him; he comes to a hard stop without consciously applying his foot to the brake pedal. Thankfully the road is deserted, and the Jeep Cherokee, even with its high center of gravity, fishtails dangerously but remains upright.

 _It’s happening all over again_ —

That’s stupid. No Tesseract this time. No plans to help an alien megalomaniac subjugate the planet. No gang of mercenary thugs carefully culled from the dark places where he existed before Coulson came to him and said _this isn’t how you want to live_.

Still.

 _It’s happening again_ —

Thoughts that had so recently refused to coalesce into anything useful seize hold of this new idea, clinging to it, isolating it the way calcium carbonate forms a pearl beneath a mollusk’s shell. He grips the steering wheel, wishing he could get a grip on himself so easily.

 _It’s happening again_ —

 _No it’s not,_ he thinks firmly, _because the woman who is my enemy now isn’t Natasha, because Natasha is in trouble, mortal danger, and I know this because… well, there’s no because, I just know it._

He’s disgusted by his own incoherence. If the Amtrak from Albuquerque to Flagstaff had followed a circuitous a route as this current train of thought, he might have wound up traveling there by way of Seattle before derailing somewhere south of the Mexican border.

The sun, sliding down on the serrated edge of a western ridge, flashes against something to his left, a road sign marking the place where a hard-packed dirt road leads into the east, down a gravel-strewn culvert and then up again, over a rise and out of sight. The sign is marked with the letters ‘PVT’, identifying it as a private lane, rather than one owned and maintained by the government.

The white-on-green text above ‘PVT’ reads NYCTIMUS WAY.

Clint isn’t an especially cultured guy. He knows languages, but only because it’s his job. He prefers Louis L’Amore westerns over Tolstoy or Dickens, the Stones over Bach, and movies where Bruce Willis blows shit up over theatrical productions where guys in skirts communicate their feelings through song and dance.

After his run-in with Fisher, however – specifically after her escape – he had looked into the tale behind Lycaon, the nickname she had given her patron. _Do you know the story? It’s from Greek myth. He was a king of Arcadia who served his own slaughtered son to Zeus at the dinner table. He wanted to know if the king of the gods was really omniscient after all._

Clint’s limited internet research had seemed to confirm that this is, at least, one form of the story. Lycaon hadn’t gotten away with his little stunt, of course. He’d been turned into a wolf – _lykos_ being Greek for wolf, hence the term _lycanthropy_ – and the son who had been relegated to an entrée had been restored to life.

The son had been named Nyctimus.

(The word also refers to a genus of spider.)

*

He abandons the Jeep on the far side of the rise, out of sight from the road, and continues on foot. It’s a risk – he might be barking up the wrong tree entirely, or his destination might be miles across this trackless desert – but even in his current state he finds it difficult not to trust his instincts. He doesn’t want to drive around a blind corner within view of a guardhouse, like the one in Colombia.

Nyctimus Way is unpaved but well-maintained, clear of the low-growing creosote and acacia bushes that seem to be all this thirsty sand can sustain. There are no trees or screening shrubs to duck behind if a vehicle were to suddenly approach, not so much as a barrel cactus, so he walks boldly, bag slung over one shoulder, quiver across his back, bow in hand.

The last glimmers of sun fire the cloudless sky. Night descends quickly, the stored heat of the day rises up out of the ground, and Clint feels sweat begin to pool at the small of his back.

With the coming of darkness he is more at ease. His night vision is good… there will be no moonlight for hours, but ambient starlight is enough… he will be able to see the flash of approaching headlights before a driver will spot him, dressed as he is in dark-washed jeans and black shirt.

Small things rustle in the bushes as he walks by: small rodents in flight, perhaps, or reptiles hot on their trail. Things move in the air above him as well, birds or bats, swooping down to snatch a bite of breakfast. Clint can’t decide who he identifies with most: the hunter or the hunted.

*

The smudge of light pollution, obscuring the constellations Aquila, Delphinus and Sagitta – his personal favorite – is the first sign that he’s on the right track. Of course they might be the lights of a pump station or power plant… or he could be completely turned around and approaching Lake Havasu City from the north.

When the ground begins to tilt beneath his feet he proceeds with caution, scaling the rise in a crouch and dropping to his belly as he approaches the crest.

Not the city, and not a water or power plant, but a one-story building, L-shaped, with the longer wing running north to south, illuminated by banks of floodlights bright enough to sting his eyes. Sturdy concrete construction, a flat roof sheathed in insulating foam, its east-facing windows small and covered in security grating. A few Jeeps are visible beyond the shorter wing, not Cherokees like his ‘borrowed’ SUV but ‘90s-model Wranglers, boxy and rugged.

Not a big place, he thinks. Smaller than Villavicencio, assuming there aren’t underground levels. Aside from the floodlights and a flimsy chain-link fence, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of security, either. The guardhouse he was expecting doesn’t exist; Nyctimus Way winds down the side of the hill, leading to an unmanned gate.

There are no words on the building, no logo, no sign, nothing to indicate he’s in the right place. Maybe Natasha is down there, strapped to a chair, pumped full of drugs, zapped with electrodes, still being laboriously and torturously remade at Sloane Fisher’s hands. Or maybe he’s on completely the wrong track and this is a storehouse run by the nation’s leading toy manufacturers, where the products that they’ve decided will be in high demand this Christmas are squirreled away for the winter, so as not to flood the market and drive down prices.

Whether it’s Fisher’s new house of horrors or an outpost of Big Toy, it doesn’t matter. The anxiety that had eased during his walk through the desert is ramping up again, sending his heart clamoring in his chest, making his breath come quick with anticipation.

This fear is not for himself, except for a cold corner of his soul that is terrified to even contemplate what he might find.

As he eases back from the crest of the hill, a voice says, “You do realize that if you go in there, you’re never coming out again.”

He ducks down, silently cursing his complacence as he pulls an arrow from the quiver and levels it in the direction of the voice, but his night vision is ruined by the bright lights beyond the ridge. If the speaker had wanted him dead, he would have been an easy target from behind, he thinks, but he keeps tension on the string, blinking rapidly and straining for a sound.

Then a small light blooms in the darkness, the muted glow of a flashlight shining up into the face of Kamala Manesh.

He hasn’t seen her since Colombia, when she tried to sedate him and wound up on the wrong end of the tranquilizer herself. Her black hair is shorter now, her dark eyes rimmed with liner but her lips nude, and her clothes – from her leather jacket to her boots – are a testament to practicality. There’s no weapon in her free hand, but he doesn’t relax. If she’s out here there could be others. He freezes, expecting her to do something, to call to a colleague or reach for a radio, but she simply stands there, patiently waiting for him to reply.

He tells her the truth, although the words are bitter. “I don’t have a choice.”

Manesh shrugs as though bored, but her eyes are sharp. “You do, actually. It would be hard, but you _could_ walk away.”

Her attitude, plus her lack of a visible weapon, seems significant, portentous, and he _knows_ that she just didn’t happen to be out here. She was waiting for him. She knew he was coming, as impossible as that seems.

He remembers his moment of doubt on the highway, the voice in his mind whispering _west, west_ and then _the lake_ , and it all becomes so clear, so obvious, that he’s acutely embarrassed. “After all the trouble you went through to get me here?”

She raises an eyebrow, all innocence.

“I had no idea this place even existed,” says Clint, realizing it even as he speaks, his sense of manipulation – of _humiliation_ – growing with every word. He wants to be furious but doesn’t seem to have room for even righteous anger. “I don’t know how you did it, but my coming here… that was all you.”

Manesh crosses her arms, aiming the flashlight’s beam between them, and he’s aware that if she pointed it into his eyes he would be momentarily blinded. Long enough, at least, for her to pull a gun from a hidden holster. “I wanted you to understand,” she says tartly.

“Understand what?”

“That this is how it’s supposed to be.”

He frowns. These cryptic words spark a memory of the last thing she said to him in Colombia: _Why are you fighting this? I thought you knew… That this is your fate. I thought you came here because you knew you were meant to join us. _

Manesh is crazy, he reminds himself. Sloane Fisher, on the other hand, while perhaps criminally insane, is also deviously calculating, and it’s Fisher who is calling the shots.“Natasha’s not down there at all, is she?”

“No.”

“Where is she?” He wants the words to sound threatening, but they come out more like a plea, like an appeal for water from a dying man.

“Right where you left her, I suppose.”

He wants to believe Manesh. He yearns to believe her with every fiber of his being, with every cell, and yet deep inside he is still _positive_ that he needs to go down to that building, that there’s no other option than to continue this headlong rush, that something terrible – even more terrible than finding out your partner and lover is a fraud – will happen if he doesn’t.

“That woman,” he says slowly, as much to himself as to Manesh, “is not Natasha.”

A faint, sardonic smile lifts the corners of her mouth. “Really?”

The smile, the tilt of her head, and the cryptic blandness of her responses leave him confused and frustrated. He drops the bow a few inches, still watching her hands. “What do you people _want_?”

“You people?” she echoes, as though not sure if she should be amused or offended. She moves – he tenses – but only to walk a few feet off the road and sit down on the edge of a large, flat boulder. Clint waits for a snake or scorpion to rear out of the darkness, to strike at her, but if they exist he supposes they won’t attack out of professional courtesy. “Let me tell you something. Fisher and I? Our objectives might still overlap, but they are _not_ the same. _She_ wants you for mostly… professional reasons, I guess you can say. She wants to break down your mind and eventually your brain in the hope of discovering how to replicate what the alien did to you.”

These words, delivered as more promise than threat, further chill him. “That’s not what she said in Colombia,” he reminds Manesh. “She wanted to turn me into one of her operatives.”

Manesh shrugs again. “Circumstances have changed, wouldn’t you say? Thanks in part you and Captain Rogers. And her interest is only _mostly_ professional. More than acquiring you, more than learning anything from you, I think she would get infinitely more pleasure out of watching you suffer and die.”

Vengeance, at least, is something that Clint understands. “But you want something else.”

She looks confused. “I don’t want you to die, if that’s what you mean.”

“So you’ve had a change of heart?”

This time her wide-eyed expression of innocence seems entirely genuine. “I never tried to kill you,” she reminds him. “Not directly.”

“But you wouldn’t have been _that_ upset if—if Aten had done the job for you.”

“I was acting under orders.”

“And now?”

Obviously unhappy with the turn of the conversation, Manesh stands. “I’m acting out of self-preservation,” she snaps. “I’m an operative, the same as the rest of them. Triggered and coded and strung up like a goddamn puppet. Surprised?” she asks. “I was, when she told me.”

Absorbing this, Clint hazards a guess: “You want your freedom.”

In the backwash of the flashlight beam, Manesh’s exotic beauty is compromised by an ugly sneer. “My memories… I can’t trust any of them. I knew, before. I knew my whole life from the time I was a child. I knew everything about myself, but it was a lie. Freedom? I don’t know what that even means. I just want to _live_.”

 _Triggered and coded,_ thinks Clint. He knows how Fisher had kept her outside operatives on a verbal and chemical leash, as well as how some of those rescued by SHIELD eventually died for want of this pass-phrase. “How long do you have?”

“Four days, I think,” she says flatly. “I don’t know the code. I don’t even always remember when she resets me. But four days would be my guess.”

The thought that this woman might be dead in less than a week inspires no elation. She’s still a crazy bitch and he still hates her for her part, however peripheral, in what was done – is being done – to Natasha, but if she’s an operative – _triggered and coded_ – then she’s as much a victim as Paola Farraday. If she has no control over her actions, if her choices are to obey and stay alive or rebel and die, can he actually blame her for what she’s done?

 _Maybe not_ , he thinks, perturbed at his burgeoning sympathy for the devil. _But it would be easier if she didn’t seem to enjoy her work so damn much_. He risks a quick look over his shoulder, thinking of the brightly-lit compound that tugs on him as surely as a magnet draws metal filings. “You’re supposed to bring me in.”

“You’re supposed to bring yourself in,” she corrects him. “I planted the seed of an idea in your head that something was wrong, that you were in trouble and safety could be found here. But yes. I was instructed to return to the facility after my task was complete.”

He suppresses a shiver at the idea of a _seed_ being planted in his mind, at the sudden image of a dark weed spreading across the folds of his brain. He doesn’t know how, doesn’t understand, but he finds that he believes her. “If you don’t, if you disobey… does it kill you?”

She shoves her hands into her jacket pockets. “I guess that depends on how well I can convince myself that my task is incomplete.”

He looks over his shoulder again, compelled to walk towards the building as one afflicted with OCD is driven to wash his hands or count the clothes hanging in his closet, or as an arachnophobe is irrationally repelled by the sight of anything with eight legs. “You’re _not_ still thinking of going in there,” Kamala says incredulously. “I told you. We planted this idea and your mind went off the deep end with it, but Romanoff isn’t in there. She isn’t in danger. There’s no impostor.”

 _She isn’t in danger. There’s no impostor._ These are beautiful words, gorgeous words, words he wants to embroider on pillowcases, but they don’t _feel_ true. “I wish I could believe you,” he says honestly, and with more than a little desperation.

“Believe this,” she says eagerly, moving to stand between him and the hill. “Come with me. Help me. There’s got to be an antidote _somewhere_ with my name on it, something SHIELD probably took from Villavicencio, and I know you’re not exactly on speaking terms with them right now, but at least you can get me to someone who is. The drug will annul the trigger, same as it did to Romanoff, and then when the four days are up it won’t matter. You help me and then I can help you.”

Help sounds like a great idea. Help sounds wonderful. He’d had Rogers’ help the first time he’d gone looking for Natasha, and Stark and Banner’s assistance from afar, and now he’s standing out in the middle of the desert, hundreds of miles from anyone who gives a shit about him, and he realizes that he feels so alone that the offer of help from an insane person under the control of the enemy sounds really _tempting_. “Help me? How?”

“This idea was put in your head,” Manesh says simply. “It can be taken out. Get me out from under Fisher’s thumb and I swear… I can get you all the information you want. I’m not the operator she is, but I know what she knows.”

Clint stares at her, working this through in his mind, planning it the way he would a tactical operation. Go back to New York. Get Stark’s assistance in breaking into SHIELD’s storage, or Steve’s in pursuing more legit options… or, if they’re as convinced as Banner that he’s crazy, go to Hill or even Fury directly, albeit unofficially, and lobby for their help in freeing Manesh. They would probably agree – it was something that might have been done anyway, if she had been taken into custody in Colombia, instead of flying out to California to murder Bruno Witten – if only because she was a source of crucial information.

He can’t. He _can’t_.

Every time he thinks about walking away from this place the fear roars back, the anxiety, the certainty that he would be turning his back on Natasha, leaving her behind for a second time, giving up on her when she never gave up on him. It’s not fair, it’s not right, and it fills him with such red-hot hatred for his foolishness and his weakness that it makes him physically ill. Head pounding, stomach clenching, he can only shake his head. “I guess you did your job a little too well.”

 

(24)

Despite the marked difference in terrain – sand and scrub brush in place of verdant forests – the drive westward from Ashmore reminds Natasha keenly of the last trip she took through the American countryside, the week after New York.

 _Wow_ , she thinks. _I’m actually kind of nostalgic for breaking gangbangers’ kneecaps_.

*

She’d left town before noon. Bruce had made a few token protests – _wait until we know more, no point in rushing off unprepared_ – but she thinks that in his heart he understands. She needs action, forward motion, more than anything else, even if that motion is in the wrong direction.

_“There’s a lot of west out there, Natasha.”_

_“I guess if I end up in the Pacific I’ll know I’ve gone too far.”_

He hadn’t offered to go with her – which she appreciated – but he had hugged her, briefly and with an expression halfway between a grimace and a wince, before handing her the phone and saying, “We’ll be in touch as soon as Tony learns something. And if you need anything, _anything_ , you call. We’ll come Thor Express, let Darcy deal with the bugs. She’s pretty scary on her own, really.”

Natasha had wanted to laugh. She had wanted to cry. She managed to do neither. She’d still been numb over everything that happened, and numb was awkward but it was also safe.

*

She had rented a 4-wheel drive Chevy from a local Hertz, wincing as she handed over the Stark Industries credit card, in no state to come up with a convincing cover story in the face of difficult questions, but the jug-eared kid behind the counter had been too busy chatting up another employee to take note.

Now, across the desert by the most direct westerly route: Interstate 40, once a part of the historic Route 66. She knows the song thanks to Coulson, who had been a Chuck Berry fan. _You'll see Amarillo and Gallup, New Mexico… Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona… Kingsman, Barstow, San Bernadino…_

_There’s a lot of west out there, Natasha._

*

Just after noon, with Albuquerque, New Mexico in her rearview mirror, Stark calls to share what Steve and Hill have learned from Paola Farraday. It doesn’t amount to much, but Stark tries to put a positive spin on things. “At least we have a starting point,” he says. The car has a hands-free link-up with her phone and Stark’s voice envelopes her in high-quality surround sound. “In the meantime, JARVIS and I are trying to track Manesh after she left the hospital.”

“She’ll be headed back to Fisher by now.”

“Maybe not. Maybe she was supposed to hang around, scramble a few other brains.” An awkward silence lingers. “Sorry.”

Natasha doesn’t reply. _What did she do to you, Clint? The hospital staff swear they never noticed anything, there’s no evidence that Fisher was ever present… what kind of damage could Manesh have done in your room in the space of a couple minutes?_

“We’re keeping an eye out for Barton, too. Car rentals, plane tickets…”

“He won’t be traveling under his own name.”

“…APBs for crazy people… we’d better hope he doesn’t end up in Vegas, we’ll never find him then…”

Natasha grits her teeth. “Stark…”

“Yeah, I heard you. Let me handle this. Barton’s not a ghost, he’ll show up.”

“The last time he was in New Mexico, he managed to get in and out of _Germany_ without making a blip on anyone’s radar.”

Stark is silent for a moment, apparently considering this. Then: “Maybe his problem is that he really needs to stay the hell out of New Mexico.”

She wants to laugh. She wants to cry. She wants to pull a sharp u-turn, drive to New York, and punch Tony Stark in the goddamn face.

Instead she terminates the call.

*

The phone rings again as she enters Kingman some seven hours later. Night has fallen and she’s going to need to make some tough decisions soon. According to her GPS, Interstate 40 takes a steep turn southward, crossing the Colorado River before continuing on into California. She had been sarcastic with Bruce when she’d mentioned the Pacific Ocean, but now it’s no more than six hours away.

“Hello?”

“Bingo,” says Stark breathlessly.

“Manesh?” she asks, not daring to hope for more.

“Barton. JARVIS found him on camera at a bus station in Flagstaff. We indexed their records with the time… he bought a ticket for Kingman. You know, like in the song.”

Natasha’s breath catches in her throat. The coincidence seems less coincidental than portentous, although she’s never been one to believe in signs and wonders. “I’m there now.”

“Yeah, I know, I’ve been tracking you,” Stark says, as though this is normal behavior. “The thing is… that was almost two hours ago, and we’re not sure where he went after that. There’re some smaller cities to the south, and Vegas is to the north…”

“Clint has a cache in Las Vegas,” says Natasha without thinking.

“A cache?”

“You know, a stockpile,” she says impatiently. “Money, documents…” _Weapons_. She’s never been to the Vegas cache, but she knows where it is and what it holds. After Budapest they’d both come clean to one another… just in case.

“No kidding,” says Stark mildly. “And this is off the record, I’d guess.”

“You’d guess right.”

“Gosh, it’s like the two of you thought you might have a reason to _not_ trust SHIELD. Maybe…” His voice trails off. “Hold on. Steve just got a call and now he’s flapping his arms at me. _What?_ You look like a sick duck.”

Natasha frowns. “Is it Hill?”

Silence. Muffled voices. Then Stark again: “Shit, it’s Barton.”

Maybe there’s a pothole, or maybe the steering wheel slips beneath her hands, but for a moment two wheels are on the low shoulder of the road, debris crunching under the bulky tires; Natasha curses and finds the pavement again. “Where is he?”

“The call’s coming from a sat phone, I’m trying— hold on, I’m going to patch you in.”

There’s a click and a stutter, and then she can hear Steve’s voice as clearly as if he were sitting in the passenger’s seat. “…don’t know what kind of game she’s playing, but Manesh doesn’t want to help anybody but herself.”

“I know that,” says Clint firmly, and it’s him, it’s _him_ , and she’s gripping the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles ache, biting her lip to keep from calling out. For a moment – a fleeting moment – the sound of his voice, the knowledge that he’s still alive, even if he hates her, is enough.

He continues, terse and determined: “But I think in this case we can use that to our advantage.”

“Fine, sure,” says Steve, but she can hear the tension behind the studied nonchalance. “Tell us where to meet the two of you and we’ll take it from there.”

“No. If you’re dealing with SHIELD, you’re better off without me anyway. Besides, I can’t get involved. I need to… I need to talk to Fisher. Her new facility… it’s so close...”

Steve’s voice is rough with frustration, with the exasperation of a man of action unable to act. “Clint, Manesh is fooling with you. Romanoff is fine, she’s back in New Mexico with Banner and Thor, and it’s her, it’s not Aten or anybody else.”

“You don’t know that.”

“We’re pretty damn sure. Banner ran a DNA test and we matched it against SHIELD’s database. It’s her.”

Natasha blinks in surprise.

Clint’s next words are a long time in coming. “If there’s a chance…”

“Just tell us where you are,” Steve breaks in. “We’ll go and talk to Fisher together, like last time.”

“I can’t… by the time you could get here…”

He’s wavering, she can hear it, and the words slip out before she can stop herself, before she can even consider whether Stark’s ‘patch’ goes both ways – “Clint, just listen to him” – and then she knows he can hear her because he goes instantly silent. It’s a silence with a chilling quality, as though they’re conversing across light years instead of miles. She can only hear the hum of the tires on the road and the sound of her own rapid breathing.

He speaks, not to her or even Steve. Instead she senses that the words are directed at himself, or maybe at a voice that only he can hear. “I don’t… she’s in trouble…”

“I’m not,” Natasha insists. “I’m okay. Clint, please. If you go down there… it’s not going to help me. It’s not going to help anyone. I don’t know what Manesh promised, but if you go in there Fisher’s going to take away everything. Everything that you are, it’ll be gone. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah,” he says flatly. “I know. She wants me dead.”

Natasha pushes those awful words away, focusing on modulating her own voice; it sounds strong, controlled and insistent. “You need to tell us where you are. You need to sit there and wait and then we can _fix_ this. I don’t give a damn about Manesh. Please, Clint. We can fix this.”

The silence stretches on, as cold as the dark side of the moon; when Clint speaks it sounds as though the words are coming from some airless vacuum. “I have to do this. I can’t explain it.”

Natasha draws a breath to speak, hears the others doing the same, but a woman’s voice on the other end beats them to it. “Trust me… I’m not any happier about this than you are.”

Natasha opens her mouth to retort and finds herself struck dumb; the memory hits her an instant later and chill scrambles up the ladder of her spine.

“And what in God’s name,” says Tony, “makes you think that any of us are going to help you?”

Manesh laughs humorlessly. “Because Fisher isn’t going to permanently damage him. At least not right away. There’s too much to learn from him… he’s too valuable. And after I get what I want, I can get him back for you.”

“We’re not monsters. We’ll help you,” says Steve, and Natasha can hear the reproof directed at Stark. “You don’t need to hold Barton over our heads.”

“Maybe _you’re_ not a monster,” says Manesh, “but I am. I have to be. It’s what she made me. Actually, if you can believe her, it’s what I always was.” She laughs again; it’s a brittle sound, like the tintinnabulation of a rusted wind chime. “There’s a rest stop on Route 95, about half an hour west of Bullhead. In three hours I’ll meet with Romanoff and no one else. If you don’t think you can abide by those terms, don’t even bother showing up.”

*

The needle is hovering around 90 miles per hour, a reckless speed on a moonless light, but the highway is empty and she doesn’t move her foot from the accelerator. She finds the meeting spot on the GPS; the computer claims that, following the posted speed limits, she’s a little more than an hour away. She should be grateful for the extra time – she could use it to collect her thoughts, gather some supplies, and attend to a few basic human needs she’s been pointedly ignoring – but a two hour margin seems like an _eternity_. Anything could happen in two hours.

Through the car speakers she can hear Stark and Steve holding a muffled conversation, issuing and countermanding each others’ ‘orders’, calculating flight paths and max speed if they plan to refuel the jet in Los Angeles… Natasha tunes them out until she hears Steve say, “We can be in Bullhead by—”

“No. I don’t want you there.”

“No?” echoes Stark, dumbfounded.

“Natasha,” says Steve, exasperated, “you can’t… you can’t _Lone Ranger_ this. If it’s a trap…”

“You heard Manesh. If I don’t show up alone, she’ll panic. She’ll run. I’m going to meet with her, hear what she has to say. If something seems wrong, I’ll…” _Break her legs. Break her neck._ “I can take care of myself. But we can’t rely on her, can’t trust her, so I need you two in the air, looking for the new Institute. Clint was here in Kingman less than two hours ago. Unless he hijacked a plane he’s got to be within a hundred and fifty mile radius. Two hundred miles at most.”

“That’s still a lot of ground to cover,” says Stark warily. “Two hundred… that’s more than 100,000 square miles. By the time we get out there…”

“Bullhead City is to the west,” she continues doggedly. “He won’t be there… she’ll want to lead me away from him. And it wouldn’t make any sense for him to double back to the east. There, I just cut a few thousand off your search pattern. Call Thor.”

“The rift—”

“I know about the goddamn rift,” she snaps, “and I will _personally_ hunt down and barbeque every single bug-eyed bastard that get through, _after we get him back._ Or am I on my own here?”

Stark is silent, but Steve’s response is prompt and heartfelt. “No,” he says. “No. You’re not alone.”


	8. Part Eight

** PART EIGHT **

_“A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,_   
_And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,_   
_And the dry stone no sound of water.”_

_\- T.S. Eliot_

(Before: 2012)

_“Can you fly one of those jets?”_

_“ I can.”_

_Rogers looks at Natasha, and she knows he’s leaving the decision in her hands. She knows that Clint is exhausted and emotionally unsteady. She also knows that, if she denies Clint this chance, this opportunity to avenge Coulson, to avenge himself, to redeem himself, he’ll never forgive her. She looks back at Rogers, and she nods._

_“You got a suit?”_

_*_

_Clint strips down unceremoniously in the small prep room outside the hanger, and Natasha pretends not to watch him as she pulls on her gauntlets and locks in a fresh charge. He’s lost weight since she saw him last._

_He is quick but methodical. Pants and boots. Undershirt and tac vest, the one that baldly identifies him as a SHIELD agent. Armguard and shooting glove. A trick quiver on his back. His eyes fixed on some distant point, as though he’s already lining up his first shot._

_He turns around and finds her staring. “Ready?”_

_She nods again._

_*_

_The agent they displace from the Quinjet doesn’t radio in about their unauthorized flight until after they’ve already launched. It’s like he knows, they all know, that this is it. Their only chance to stop whatever Loki’s planning._

We’re it.

_What a terrifying thought._

_“All set,” Rogers tells Stark over comms, holding on to the rigging as the engines fire and the craft banks._

_“You and Romanoff?” His voice sounds distorted, static muffling the words coming from his damaged suit._

_“And Barton.”_

_“Barton? The guy who was trying to kill all of us, like, fifteen minutes ago?”_

_A muscle twitches in Clint’s jaw._

_“Stark—”_

_“Yeah, I know, beggars can’t be choosers. At least tell me he does something better than arrows.”_

(Before: 2012)

_Long before the first sirens can be heard, Mary Charlotte is in position._

_The girl typically walks home from school, except in cases of bad weather. Today the sky is clear, although a stiff wind is blowing in from the southeast._

Good _, she thinks._ It will fan the flames.

_She lets the child get a few blocks from the school, away from likely witnesses, before pulling up alongside the curb and adopting an appropriately worried expression. “Miss Banks, thank the Lord.”_

_The girl looks puzzled, peering in through the open window. “Sister Elizabeth?”_

_“The school just received the call, but you must have already left,” lies Mary Charlotte, who at St. Michael’s is not known as Mary Charlotte at all. Another identity compromised, she thinks. It is regrettable but necessary._

_This is the last time it will be necessary._

_“What call, Sister?” asks the girl, her eyes narrowing in exasperation._

_“There’s been a fire,” Mary Charlotte says, struggling to look as troubled as a good nun ought. “A terrible fire. Get in, quickly.”_

_The girl hesitates – children are so much more suspicious these days, Mary Charlotte thinks sadly – but Sister Elizabeth is a teacher and an upstanding member of the St. Michael’s community._

_After a second, the child gets into the car._

_*_

_The street is blocked off, but they can see plenty from beyond the barricades. The firemen have given up on the little flat with the brick façade and clusters of roses, and are trying instead to keep the flames from spreading to the neighboring homes._

_The girl stares, her gray eyes dry but her lips thin and bloodless._

_“We’ll go back to my house,” says Mary Charlotte briskly. “It’s madness here, just madness. We’ll call the police and get this all sorted out… darling, it’s quite likely that neither of your parents were even home at the time.”_

_Lies, lies, lies, but she doesn’t want the child to start crying._

_*_

_Artemiev is waiting, as arranged. He wears a good suit and his hair is styled quite fashionably, but he is still as ugly as sin. And Mary Charlotte knows sin._

_“Here we are,” she says, chivying the girl from kitchen to parlor. “This man is from the city police.”_

_The girl stares up at Artemiev, still tearless, still calm. “No he isn’t.”_

_Artemiev raises an eyebrow at Mary Charlotte, who smiles and shrugs.He snorts. “Will they be looking for her at the airport, Charlotte?”_

_“Not yet,” says Mary Charlotte. “Not with London on fire.”_

_“I’ll scream,” says the child abruptly, her hands tightly clenched by her sides. “I’ll throw a fit. I’ll tell everyone…”_

_“You’ll tell them nothing,” says Artemiev, smiling indulgently. “You’ll be my little daughter, fast asleep, worn out from a long day at school.”_

_The girl looks at Mary Charlotte, her eyes as hard as granite. “I suppose you’re not a real nun, either.”_

_“Dear,” says Mary Charlotte, “as of this moment I’m not anything. I’m retiring. This is a young woman’s game.” _

_She looks to Artemiev, to tell him where to deposit her share of the profit, but inexplicable heat flashes across her chest; she stumbles, doesn’t realize she’s fallen until she feels the rough nap of the carpet against her cheek._

_In the distance, the front door slams._

_Mary Charlotte – who has been Elizabeth, who has been Alice, and Celeste and Annabeth and Gabrielle and once, along ago, Tatianna – cannot breathe._

_She cannot move._

_Shadows move across her vision, cast by phantom fires, flames like she has never seen before. They are deep and dark; they shed no light; they are large and vast and eternal._

(25)

Just past eight o’clock, Sloane is with DeGrasse in her drab little office, working out the details of the girl’s programming – and Sloane hates that word; it’s so _mechanical_ – when the false daylight beyond the glazed windows is replaced by deep and sudden night.

DeGrasse looks up, startled, and the hovering Keyes puts a hand on his gun, but Sloane remains calm. They still have internal power. The floodlights are out, not the generator itself.

The door flies open and Keyes pulls his pistol, but it is only Jason (despite the fact that she has _told_ him that he is supposed to knock, and this is why you can’t just tell people things, you have to make them understand, you have to almost literally _tattoo it on their brains_ ). “Doctor…”

“I know,” she says serenely, checking her watch. “He’s earlier than I expected. Get Damian and Sophia, make sure he finds his way here.”

Jason nods and departs.

“Who’s here?” DeGrasse demands.

In the glow from her desk lamp, DeGrasse’s face seems more angular than before. The sloping intersections of chin and cheekbones and nasal ridge remind Sloane of the triangular head of a venomous snake. “Take a wild guess.”

“I don’t… wait. _Merde_ …” He drops his pen. “ _Barton_? What were you thinking?”

“It’s not a problem,” she says smoothly, enjoying his reaction. She had hoped that Barton would arrive during DeGrasse’s visit, hoped to redeem herself in his eyes – and Lycaon’s – for the mess in Colombia, even though none of that had been _her_ fault.

Once she had been interested in Barton for other reasons, but that had been _before_ , when she pictured herself as the spider in the center of a vast web of operatives, building a global intelligence network from the ground up with assets the likes of which had never been seen. Barton and Romanoff would have been something of a feather in her cap, especially once word got around that they had ‘defected’ from SHIELD to join her team.

But things are different now.

While her patron’s goal is to perfect complete control over a subject, such as Loki had done with Barton and Erik Selvig, Sloane senses that far more change can be affected through subtle – albeit less theatric – manipulations. Make a business rival decide he’s willing to settle. Sway a politician’s vote without pricey bribes or messy threats. Persuade a woman to have an affair so her husband has grounds for divorce without any prenuptial complications.

The possibilities are almost endless. And if she plays her cards right, if she makes the proper connections, she won’t need to prostrate herself in front of people like Lycaon, or hope that governments and groups like SHIELD will agree to look the other way. People will come to her on the free market, and _she_ will have the freedom to bring the change that this world needs.

But first: Barton.

“What if he brings the others?” asks DeGrasse, visibly paling. Keyes’ heavy brow is furrowed, his hand clenching around his pistol’s grip.

Sloane puts away the documents regarding the girl. She makes her motions slow and calm, exuding control. “He isn’t. Kamala assured me that he was making the trip alone.”

“Yes, well, she’s not here, is she?” DeGrasse snaps. “We haven’t heard from her for hours… anything could have happened.”

“Barton isn’t coming here in anger, he’s coming here for help,” Sloane explains, annoyed by how quickly DeGrasse has lost his cultured air. “Kamala gave him a very simple suggestion that he was in danger and that safety could be found here.”

“The second he sees your face…”

“It’ll be too late by then,” Sloane assures him. She trusts the trio of Jason, Damian and Sophia to succeed where Kamala had failed in Colombia. Barton is one man, alone, an ex-secret agent playing a game he doesn’t understand and isn’t equipped for, an _archer_ for God’s sake, too frightened to call on his so-called friends for help, probably terrified of his own shadow by this point.

One man, alone and afraid: just the way she likes them.

 

(26)

When he’s finished, Clint walks to the front door. It’s something Natasha might do, something bold and brash and characteristic of her well-earned confidence.

Clint’s usually confident, too, but he still prefers secrecy, distance, and stealth. Under other circumstances he would have preferred to go in through a window, but the windows all have small mullioned panes that would be noisy to break, and the glazed glass means he wouldn’t know what he was climbing into. And he’s already announced himself by killing the exterior lights.

Besides, the sense that he is _so close to where he needs to be_ is almost overwhelming; it’s becoming hard to think about anything but getting inside that building, even though he can already guess what awaits him.

A stout guy in his mid-thirties with blond, brush-cut hair is waiting for him in the doorway, holding a Colt M4 like they have more than a passing acquaintance. “Hands up,” he says gruffly, and another figure steps out, a taller, younger man with a ponytail and dark, bristling eyebrows.

Brush Cut watches while Eyebrows frisks Clint, coming up with two combat knives and, of course, the bow. “I’m not here to fight,” says Clint mildly, but the men ignore him, shepherding him through the open door and into a short hallway.

A third member of the posse is there, a statuesque woman with dark, shaggy hair and an Amazonian physique. If Brush Cut seems comfortable with his M4, Grendel here looks like she might take hers to bed. She scowls and grabs the bow from Eyebrows, and he sulks but doesn’t complain. “Come on.”

The interior lights are lowered – although not doused completely – and Clint strains to make out details as he’s marched down the hallway and through a door, the woman leading, the men close behind. The floor is vinyl and the walls plain plaster. No electronic locks on the doors, he notes. No keycards. Fisher’s only had a month to rebuild and she must have spent a lot of her time on these three, assuming they aren’t just hired muscle. No time for renovations or upgrades. This is a bare-bones operation… for now.

He guesses they’re no more than a third of the way down the longest wing when the woman opens a door and steps across the threshold. Eyebrows gives Clint a shove and he follows her in an exaggerated stumble, hoping to get close enough to recover the bow.

No luck. The room is an office, and Sloane Fisher is sitting behind a desk. Two more men are with her – one in business wear, the other in black fatigues – although neither of them have quite the same self-satisfied expression as the good doctor.

She looks much as she had in Colombia: ash-blonde hair pulled back, a pair of wire rimmed glasses perched on her nose above a rather cute smattering of freckles, although she wears a neat gray suit in place of a lab coat. The lofty, preening hauteur is the same, too, for all that she’s come down in the world in terms of real estate, and she says “Hello again, Agent Barton,” in a tone that makes his teeth ache. “Except… excuse me, I understand you’re no longer an agent. Doing freelance work these days, correct?”

Grendel walks forward and sets Clint’s bow on Fisher’s desk, and Eyebrows gives up the two knives, like a couple of hunting dogs bringing back their master’s kill.

Fisher picks up one knife, sets it down, and runs one finger across the grip as though checking for dust. “No arrows?” she asks contemptuously, eyes twinkling.

“I used them up in New Mexico,” says Clint, amazed at how steady his voice sounds, shocked at how calm he must seem when every cell in his body is screaming for him to knock these sons of bitches down and _go find Natasha_. He’s close, so close; he must be… she might be in the next room, or just down that hall, drugged or dazed or wondering why he hasn’t come for her…

“Sophia, Damian, I need you to wait outside,” says Fisher. She speaks unhurriedly, gestures smoothly, as though these are just lines she’s memorized, as though none of this is real. “It’s ridiculous for us all to stand around, staring at each other. Jason…” she waves regally in the direction of the door.

Grendel and Eyebrows depart and, like another dutiful hound, Brush Cut – Jason – closes the door and stands in front of it, arms crossed, the M4 hanging from its strap across his broad chest. The two other men don’t move. They’re both strangers to Clint, and they both seem uneasy, eyes flickering from Clint to Fisher to rifle and back again.

Despite Fisher’s relaxed air, her easy smile doesn’t reach her eyes. She sits back, regarding him over steepled fingers as the corners of her lips curve into a humorless sneer. “This is a bit of déjà vu. The last time you came to me you were looking for Natasha Romanoff. How can I help you now? _What do you want_?”

A daisy-chain of impulses and emotion continue to buffet Clint, a mental assault on his mind perpetrated _by_ his mind: relief at being where he needs to be, impatience at his continued failure, and of course hatred for the woman in front of him. Her question seems to mock his pain, but her interest in his response is undeniable. Something compels him to honesty, and he says, “I’m still looking for her.”

Fisher lowers her hands, looking genuinely puzzled. “Here?” she asks, in such a tone of bewilderment that Clint suddenly _knows_ that Manesh was telling the truth. (And at the same time that knowing isn’t enough, because he’s still certain – as certain as he is of his own name – that the woman in New Mexico, the woman on the phone, is a stranger, a fraud, and that his uncanny desire to come to this place has something to do with her—)

Fisher leans forward now, chin on one fist, and addresses the suited man sitting across the desk as a professor might inform a particularly slow student. “The really amazing thing with the concept of _seeding_ an idea,” she says in a hushed and unctuous tone, “is that it can take so many forms. The human brain is just such a marvelously complex thing. I think…” She looks back to Clint, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I think he might have projected his fear onto Romanoff.”

The suited man clears his throat. “Doctor…”

But Fisher’s eyes are still on Clint. “You can’t help yourself, can you? You must _enjoy_ being the hero. The white knight charged with rescuing the damsel in distress. Probably something to do with your father, I’d imagine. In order to repudiate his memory, you search out opportunities to be a protector. Is that why you really left SHIELD? Not enough action, not enough accolades, not enough…”

“ _Doctor_. Would you please do something with _those_?”

The suited man’s eyes are on Clint’s confiscated weapons, still lying discarded on Fisher’s desk. With a sigh Fisher sweeps the knives into a drawer, although she ignores the more cumbersome bow which, without arrows, is hardly considered a weapon at all. “I told you, Ansel… he’s here looking for answers, not violence.” She stands. “We can help you, Mr. Barton. We can make everything clear…”

Jason moves behind him, surprisingly fast for such a sturdy guy, and Clint is almost too slow; he feels a sting in his right bicep as he lurches forward, grabbing his bow and hitting the trigger on the grip even as he rolls up against the side of the desk.

The explosions from the generator are distant, muffled, but the ones placed on the roof are close, very close, an eruption of sound and light and rippling air, and Clint’s ears ring full of harsh vibrations as the walls tremble and the power fails. No time to pause and wait for sound to return; the room is dark, not pitch-black because of a strip of yellow emergency lighting above the window, just light enough to see the cloud of dust, the smoke, the shapes moving awkwardly through the gloom.

The silent man in the black fatigues is armed, but probably with nothing worse than that handgun, so Clint goes for Jason first. The M4 straps tangle around the blond’s torso, then his neck, but Clint is able to grip the stock, pull it back, swing it at where his opponent’s head should be; there is a nasty crack that he feels rather than hears, a falling shadow, and the gun comes free.

Not an instant too soon: the door is opening now, opening inward, blocked by Jason’s body, but then Clint forces it open enough to admit him, sees Grendel standing in front of him in the sulfurous light, her eyes wide with surprise, her finger on the trigger, but Clint pulls his trigger first. The chatter of the assault rifle seems to be coming from a great distance away, but of course it is closer even than the explosions, so close that her midsection is ripped apart and she flies backward without firing a shot.

From within the office, Fisher starts screaming.

Eyebrows is nowhere to be found, so maybe the little weasel took off or maybe he’s lying in wait somewhere, but the man in fatigues is still behind him and Clint’s back is itching in anticipation of a bullet, so he pushes forward, into the dim yellow light, just as an alarm begins to sound.

*

The trick quiver is really just a clever way of carrying an assortment of specialized arrowheads – grappling, incendiary, a few others depending on the occasion – which can be called up by toggling the controls on the grip. The incendiaries, removed from their housing, are still incendiaries, still tuned into the commands of the bow-grip trigger. There hadn’t been as many of them in the quiver as he would have liked, but in a pinch, placed carefully beneath the generator and on the roof after the floodlights were taken out, they work almost as well as C4.

He’d been going for noise, distraction, chaos. He hadn’t been certain where he’d be taken inside the building, and he certainly hadn’t been planning on the fire. He can smell the smoke, though, too much to have been simply thrown off by the initial explosions. Maybe the roof is burning.

*

Clint reaches the intersection between the two wings without being shot from behind or jumped on by Eyebrows or anyone else, and the blaring klaxons seem unspeakably loud which probably means that he didn’t permanently damage his hearing, and these are both good things. However, he also feels strange, maybe from breathing too much smoke in the office, and a little sluggish.

No time to worry about it now. The door to the second wing is locked, but a quick application by the rifle results in the lock no longer existing, and he steps into a narrow hallway lit by the same bile-yellow emergency lights but mercifully free of smoke. There are windows on one side of the hallway and doors on the other, and the doors all have wire-screened rectangles of glass like observation ports. Once again, nowhere for a keycard, just thumb-turn locks above the doorknob.

He opens the first door, looks inside, runs to the next and then the next after that, repeating the process.

Empty, empty, empty.

Each vacant cell is a punch to the gut, a repeating, nightmarish impossibility. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do if she isn’t here. He was certain she’d be here. He was positive – irrationally so – that by coming to this place he would find the answers he needs.

But that was all a lie. A seed.

Still he continues, doggedly compelled, opening doors into unoccupied rooms, M4 in one hand, looking behind him, until he reaches a room that, when the lock is disengaged, swings open of its own accord. It thumps into his shoulder, rocking him back a step, and a tiny figure slips through the crack between door and jam. Clint catches a glimpse of a dark braid, a flutter of fabric, and then the child – the _child_ – is running away from him, back down the hallway.

Clint’s first inane thought is _I didn’t know Fisher had a daughter_. His second is _why keep her in a locked room?_ And then the obvious answer hits him and he feels immediately ill in a way that has nothing to do with breathing toxic fumes. He bellows after her: “Hey!”

He’s not sure how she hears him over the scream of the sirens, but she stops, skidding a little in her stocking feet, looking back over her shoulder: a small, freckled face in a blue robe dyed acid green by the emergency lights. He imagines what he must look like to her: a strange man dressed in black, armed with an enormous gun. “That’s the wrong way!” he yells, looking past the girl to where smoke has started to pour into the second wing. Only the fire has kept Fisher’s people from pursuing him so far, he thinks, but fire can turn from ally to enemy in an instant. “Come on!”

The girl looks down the hallway, turns back to him, as though weighing her options, and he doesn’t really want to chase the kid down but he can’t let her run into that smoke, where Fisher and her cronies will be ready to shoot anything that emerges… and then she’s dashing back up the hall towards him.

Jesus, she’s little. Young. Six, maybe seven. She doesn’t cry, though, doesn’t speak a word, just looks up at him as though saying, _Okay, hotshot, now what?_

“Come on,” he says again, moving back up the corridor, trusting that she’ll follow.

She does.

*

Four more cells. He checks them all. Empty, empty, empty, empty.

Clint waits for the panic to take over, for his chemically-induced obsession to override his better judgment, but the fear – while definitely still present – has faded into the background for the time being. He’s too concerned about his new charge to have any fear left over for other, less immediate things.

Kids. He isn’t crazy about them. They’re fragile and they’re helpless and you’re never sure how they’re going to act in high-pressure situations because they don’t think logically, and that’s not their fault because they’re just kids, but it sure makes things more difficult.

He remembers a mission in Cartagena, back in the mid-nineties, sweeping for survivors after a group of Basque nationalist radicals firebombed a city block. They’d been trying to assassinate a politician, and hadn’t cared who else might be in the way. The politician had died, but so had seventeen other people, and Clint had found the remains of three child-sized bodies in a charred apartment. They’d tried to hide in the closet, as though the fire was a monster that had crawled out from under their beds.

Now the girl scampers along beside him, wordless as Clint checks the four rooms; he remembers Saja and wonders if maybe she _can’t_ speak. Deal with that later, too, he decides, because here is the end of the wing and there’s no door, no exit, just a blank plaster wall, and surely this has to be some kind of fire code violation.

He reverses his grip on the rifle and applies the butt to the nearest window, shattering glass and splintering mullions. If Fisher’s people are outside their escape might be heard, might be _seen_ , but the smoke is thicker now and there’s really no other option. Knocking out as many of the shards as he can see, he drops the M4, letting it hang by its strap.

The opening is too small to admit the both of them at once. “I’m going to lower you through,” he says, voice nearly lost amid the klaxons, but the girl nods. He lifts her from behind, picking her up beneath her arms; she tucks her legs in as he maneuvers her through the window and he leans against the casement, stretching down, afraid of dropping her. Her feet touch the ground and he calls, “Stay put, watch out for the glass!” because she has no shoes, only her socks.

_Fragile and helpless and illogical…_

The girl can follow directions, at least, because she doesn’t move while he climbs out after her. The remains of the windows crunch between his boots and the concrete slab, and he isn’t sure if he can hold her and wield the M4 at the same time. Again, no choice, he can’t make her walk in broken glass, and at least this side of the building is still dark, apparently deserted.

The night air is cold and clear, almost sweet after breathing smoke, but he’s still dizzy, oddly tired despite the adrenalin pumping through his body. Light appears around the corner of the building, accompanied by the growl of an engine, and Clint remembers the Jeeps.

He scoops the girl up with his right arm, the M4 still in his left, and sidles to the corner with his back against the wall. A quick glimpse tells him everything he needs to know. In the distance is the generator outbuilding, steadily belching smoke out across the compound, but of more immediate interest is the black Wrangler with Eyebrows behind the wheel.

 _Either that one isn’t an operative,_ Clint thinks, _or his programming isn’t especially tight. I doubt Fisher told him to go for help._

Eyebrows seems to be struggling with the gear shift, but he looks up when Clint comes around the corner, sees the M4, and bails out through the passenger’s side door. “Shit, man,” he says shakily, hands held above his head, “it’s yours, okay? It’s all yours.”

Clint drops the girl into the driver’s seat; she scrambles, quick and agile as a monkey, across the center console to the other side, leaning out and pulling the door shut. Clint slides behind the wheel, popping the hand brake and shifting into drive. “Seat belt,” he tells the girl, “and keep down, as far down as you can.”

*

He rounds the corner fast and with the high-beams on, opting for surprise over stealth; in the flash of the headlights he sees a tableau that might be amusing under different circumstances: Fisher, bent over, coughing, hair mussed, covered in powdery plaster. Jason: a bloody gash on his forehead, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the light. The suited man: stumbling back out of the Jeep’s path. The guy in the fatigues is holding a handgun, but he doesn’t raise it towards Clint, he’s too busy trying to herd the others away from the door, which is vomiting black smoke and spitting sparks.

Nyctimus Way is a pale ribbon, snaking up the side of the scrub-covered hill, and the Jeep raises a literal cloud of dust in its wake.

 

(27)

“What do you mean, you have to go?” demands Amber. She brandishes her wooden spoon and a few gobs of reheated macaroni and cheese splatter against the doorframe. “You just got home.”

Joey doesn’t try to explain that, sometimes, police work doesn’t follow a nine-to-five schedule. They’ve had this argument before, and as far as he can tell, his wife simply refuses to understand. She also doesn’t like being reminded that she’s spent the past year insisting that he be more _assertive_ , more _ambitious_ ; then, once he made detective, she acted surprised that he couldn’t keep bankers’ hours. It’s infuriating.

In one respect, his CI has really awful timing. On the other hand, Joey’s grateful for an excuse to get out of the apartment for a while. He takes the steps two at a time, fishing his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and pressing it to his ear. “You still there?”

“Where else would I be?” says Damian in a shrill, slightly-hysterical tone not much different from Amber’s. “Shit, Joe, I told you this woman was mixed up with some bad stuff.”

“You did tell me that,” Joey agrees. Of course, Damian has told him plenty of things since their salad days; a lot of those things have been protestations of innocence that ended up being as fake as the drivers licenses he’d sold over the Internet, and as flimsy as the fraudulent checks he’d been busted trying to cash. Joey still isn’t sure how two guys who’d been so close in high school could have chosen two such diametric paths in life: one dedicated to upholding the law, the other to circumventing it.

When Damian had called a few weeks ago with a crazy story about being approached by a ‘kind of hot mad scientist chick,’ Joey hadn’t known what to think. He’d gone ahead and pulled the paperwork on the address Damian gave him; the building was owned by a corporation called Arcadian Health and Wellness and the permits, which all seemed to have been properly filed, identified it as a rehab clinic. That didn’t strain Joey’s credulity – the middle of the desert was a good a place as any to go through detox, he supposed – but Damian swore there was more going on than met Mohave County’s bureaucratic eye.

“This doctor-lady shows up on my doorstep, offers me a job, and you know no one in their right mind would ever _want_ to hire me. She told me that it would be on a trial basis, but that if it worked out, if I was the kind of guy she could deal with, she’d help me become, like, a better _version_ of myself. She’d fix all the things that were wrong with me. I don’t know, Joey, she creeped me out.”

At that point, having been a detective for all of six weeks, Joey wasn’t prepared to dispatch a SWAT team based on a convicted criminal’s hunch, no matter how many R-rated movies they’d snuck into together as teenagers. “Judges don’t issue warrants based on creep-factor,” he’d told Damian. Then, because he felt like he was being a bad friend – former friend – and because he felt he owed something back to the universe for having wound up with a pretty good life while Damian was a shiftless loser – he’d added, “But if you can get me evidence, _real evidence_ , that this place is doing something illegal… I’ll listen.”

_Should have kept my damn mouth shut._

When the phone rang, when Damian’s name came up on caller ID, Joey had expected some kind of BS. Maybe he’d declare that Arcadian was violating OSHA regulations, or that they were cheating on their taxes, but most likely he’d just been fired and was calling Joey to get the name of a lawyer who’d be desperate enough to take a half-assed wrongful termination suit. Instead, as Joey squeezes himself into Amber’s VW Bug – it’s kind of humiliating, but his Explorer is in the shop – Damian says breathlessly, “The building’s on fire, half the roof’s fallen in… I keep hearing gunshots…”

“Whoa, whoa… hold on a second. Has someone been hurt?”

“Sophia’s dead,” says Damian. He’s breathing heavily now; either he’s worked himself into a frenzy over the memory, or he’s on the move. “I was right next to her, I couldn’t see a whole lot but I heard the gunshots and she sort of flew back, and then I got the hell out of there.”

“Who’s Sophia? A patient?”

“There’s no patients, just the kid. Sophia’s like me. Security.”

Joey pulls onto Highway 95. “Listen, Damian, I’m going to have to hang up and call this in. Are you safe? Is the shooter still there?”

“Barton? No, he took off like twenty minutes ago, and then I think the doc sent Jason or the black guy after him, so there’s no Jeeps left, but I’m keeping the hell out of sight… I could have sworn I heard more gunshots…”

Joey frowns. This is the kind of incoherence he’s come to expect from Damian, and there’s no way he can parse it all and drive and stay sane at the same time, so he grabs a hold of what seems like the most pertinent information. “Barton? You mean you identified the shooter?”

“Yeah, the doc was expecting him, told us to bring him inside so we did, me and Jason and Sophia, I don’t know where the other chick is… and then they were in the office, you know, all of them, and then the roof just exploded and he shot Sophia and ran off.”

“You got a good look at him? Could you give a suspect description?”

Damian hesitates. “He was a white guy. Kind of old.”

Joey sighs. “Okay, I guess that’s a start. What kind of weapon did he have?”

“Well, that’s the thing, you know, because he shot Sophia, but when he went into the office Jason had the gun. This guy, he just had a bow.”

“A… a bow?” echoes Joey, automatically picturing a cold-blooded killer wearing an old-fashioned necktie.

“Yeah,” says Damian. “You know, like a bow and arrow.”

 

(28)

Midnight New York time and Maria’s call finds Steve at 35,000 feet somewhere over the Texas panhandle. He’s still not a great pilot, and he wouldn’t want to be at the controls in a firefight, but he’s better than he was a couple of months ago. Having JARVIS as his copilot helps, too.

“Where’s Stark?” is the first thing out of Maria’s mouth after her face appears, translucent against the cockpit window.

Steve thinks that she must be calling using a home computer, because her hair is down around her shoulders, her face scrubbed free of what little makeup she wears. “Catching a few z’s while he can.” They’ll arrive in New Mexico within the hour, rendezvous with Banner and Thor, and consider their options.  “Should I wake him?”

“No,” Maria says, smiling wryly, “it’s actually nice to think that there might still be one or two things about SHIELD that he _doesn’t_ know.”

Steve figures that if SHIELD has any secrets left from Tony Stark, it’s only for lack of trying. It’s hard to say for sure, without much of a baseline to compare with, but Stark’s seemed… _off_ lately, preoccupied and irritable, less likely to trowel over harsh remarks with insouciant charm. His war of words with Dr. Foster had escalated far more quickly than a mere clash of personalities could explain, and he’d spent the first hour of today’s flight pacing the hold, engaged in a muffled argument with Ms. Potts. “Did you find something?”

“What I _can’t_ find are any records of agents named Keyes… or code-named, for that matter, although that took some doing. There _are_ agents in deep cover whose files I don’t have access to.”

“ _You_ don’t have access? I thought you were Fury’s right-hand… er, woman.”

Maria sniffs. “Like any intelligence organization there are firewalls, redundancies, compartmentalization of…”

“In other words, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing?”

She pauses, eyeing him critically as though trying to decide if that was an insult or a joke, and since Steve’s not really sure either he doesn’t try to explain himself. Eventually she continues, an edge to her voice. “I _could_ get access… but I would have to explain what it is I’m doing.”

“We’re liaisons,” Steve reminds her. “We’re… liaising.”

“And Fury would buy that, or at least pretend to. But Park won’t, and if he’s our man I don’t want to risk alerting him that we’re on his tail.”

“Are we? On his tail, I mean.”

She shakes her head slowly. “The minute I start digging around in his file, alarms will go off. He’s IA and he’s high up and he’s investigating my superior. I’ll be put on leave and you’ll be stuck _liaising_ with someone else.”

“I understand,” sighs Steve. “Fine, forget Park. Paola said Keyes was running security for a Frenchman.”

“We have French agents,” says Maria readily. “I’m compiling that list now, looking for any possible connections to Fisher or Witten, maybe a posting in South America. If I need to I could show Mrs. Farraday pictures of the most likely candidates, although I admit that wouldn’t be my first option.”

“What about the Council?”

“No one serving on the council currently is French.”

He frowns. “Currently?”

“Well, it isn’t a lifetime appointment.” She raises a wineglass to her lips. “SHIELD’s been around for a while, in one form or another, and times change. Influences change. Besides, no one would want that job forever, _trust me_.”

“Because of Fury?”

She smirks. “Because international espionage doesn’t mix well with bureaucratic oversight. And… yeah, because of Fury.”

“So maybe this Frenchman is a former member of the Council,” Steve muses. “I suppose looking into that would set off a couple of alarms, too.”

“A couple,” Maria agrees. “But I may not have to leave an official trace. There are plenty of higher-level agents who’ve been here longer than me, some even before the director.”

“And you trust them?”

She shrugs, taking another drink. “Enough to ask a few questions about the last time France was represented on the Council.”

Steve laughs despite himself. “How are you going to work _that_ into a conversation?”

She smiles back at him. “Trust me, Captain. When it comes to extracting information and generally being a manipulative bitch, I learned from the best.”

 

(29)

_“Cognitive dissonance.”_

_“What?”_

_“That thing you’re feeling right now. It’s when you believe two things, two contradictory things, at the same time. Our brains just aren’t wired for that. Sometimes it’s like a dog whistle inside my skull. Sometimes I hardly even notice it.” Manesh crushes her cell phone beneath one booted foot and looks up at him. Her crocodile-sharp smile flashes in the darkness and they both go their separate ways. _

“Hey! Wake up!”

Clint’s head snaps up so fast that his neck aches. “I’m awake,” he says automatically, not sure if it’s strictly true.

The desert slides by on either side of the Jeep, visible only in the backwash from the headlights. No other traffic shares this lonely stretch of highway.

“I’m awake,” Clint says again.

He’s a little surprised to find that the girl in the passenger’s seat, with her dark hair messily braided and her too-cute pale blue robe frayed at the hem, was not a figment of his imagination or an invention of his overtaxed mind. She’s securely belted in, legs crossed in front of her, scowling at him. “Well, it looked like your eyes were closed,” she says crossly. “You said we wanted Highway 93 and I saw a sign that it’s coming up soon.”

_Well. I guess she can talk._

Clint glances at the instrument panel, where the clock – strangely blurry at first, clearing after a few blinks – tells him that almost two hours has passed. He doesn’t remember most of it. He certainly doesn’t recall telling the girl about the next turnoff. Simple weariness can’t explain this and, embarrassed, he glances at his passenger again. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she says caustically, “but you haven’t driven us off the road yet.”

He frowns. There’s something strange about her voice, something unusual, but he can’t put his finger on it. His mouth tastes funny: dry and slightly metallic. He had water in his bag, but his bag is still somewhere in the Arizona desert. “I meant, did Fisher… did those people do anything to you?”

“No,” says the girl promptly. “They were going to, but they hadn’t yet. I just got there last night.”

Clint hesitates. He wants to know more, he _needs_ to know more, but his thoughts are muddled and he’s not sure how far he can push the kid before she’ll start freaking out. Because she’s calm now, bizarrely calm, but the freak-out is inevitable, isn’t it? “Do you know what they had planned?” he asks carefully.

Her mouth twists. “No, but it must have been something dreadful because Dr. Fisher and Mr. DeGrasse were both very excited about it.”

“Wait.” It takes a few seconds before Clint can decide why any of that was important. He feels like he’s been drinking. He hasn’t been drinking, has he? “Who’s DeGrasse?”

“Ansel DeGrasse,” she replies promptly. “He was the man in the suit you almost ran over back there. I wish you had.”

“Yeah, me too,” mutters Clint. “What else did they say?”

“They said a lot of things. You need to be more specific.”

Clint glances at the kid again. Freckled face, pointed chin, challenge in her eyes. “How old are you?”

“Seven and a half. How old are _you?_ ”

He shakes his head, trying to ignore how the lighted instrument panels blur and warp. “I don’t remember seven and a half year olds being such smartasses when I was your age.”

“Probably because back then they fed all the smartasses to the dinosaurs.”

 _I think I liked her a lot better when she didn’t talk._ “Names,” says Clint through gritted teeth. “What other names did Fisher and this DeGrasse guy mention?”

She looks thoughtful. “The other man was named Keyes. And… Artemiev. Christopher Artemiev. He was the man who… brought me here.”

 _Artemiev._ The name is teasingly familiar, but again, Clint can’t quite grasp the reason. “Who else?”

“Keyes, Artemiev,” she recites dutifully, eyes narrowed in concentration. “Kamala. Romanoff.”

The steering wheel slips briefly beneath his sweating palms; the girl sucks in a sharp breath but says nothing as he quickly regains control. “Romanoff. What about her?”

“I don’t know,” she says, her voice higher-pitched now, and maybe this is the freak-out he was anticipating or maybe she’s just tired of his questions. She begins speaking very rapidly. “They talked about the Soviets doing more harm than good, that it made her a poor subject, and also about her partner, a person named Barton, and the doctor would have been upset if he’d died because she wanted to look at his brain, and did you realize you’re bleeding?”

The question takes a moment to register; he glances at her again and find she’s staring pointedly at his bare arm, and there is a smear of mostly-dried blood just above the elbow. “Shit.” He looks guiltily at the girl. Seven and a half. “Sorry.”

“I’ve heard worse,” she says airily. “What happened?”

“I think they tried to tranquilize me,” Clint says, a sinking feeling in his gut as he recalls Jason moving behind him, the pinching pain in his arm right before all hell broke loose. “Must’ve gotten at least a partial dose.”

Her eyes widen. “Does that mean we’re going to drive off the road now?” she asks, sounding legitimately concerned for the first time.

“No,” Clint says quickly, although understanding the cause of his exhaustion has somehow made it more profound. He knows that the wisest course of action would be to pull over and give the sedative time to work through his system, because he’s behind the wheel of a two-ton bullet and there’s a little kid beside him with big frightened eyes and those tiny little socks on her feet and he would risk himself but he can’t risk her. But then what if someone’s following them? What if the Jeep is lo-jacked? What if Fisher or one of her cronies is just a couple miles back, waiting to see how far he’ll get before he collapses?

“I don’t want to go back there,” says the girl in a small voice, as though able to read his mind.

Clint blinks the blur from his vision a second time. A green roadside sign announces that Highway 93 is a quarter-mile away. “Half an hour,” he says aloud. He’s made it this long, for the most part; he can hold it together for another thirty minutes.

But he shows the kid how to use the emergency brake, just in case.


	9. Part Nine

** PART NINE **

_“I must tell you that I should really like to think there's something wrong with me- Because, if there isn't, then there's something wrong with the world itself-and that's much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I'd rather believe there is something wrong with me, that could be put right.”_

_\- T.S. Eliot_

 

(After)

I am eleven, and I sit in the grass, trying to picture their coffins, their bodies, beneath my feet. I think of the worst things possible, trying to wring some kind of reaction out of myself, but all I feel is more of the same nothing-in-particular, like a big gaping void deeper than any grave. “It seems like I’m supposed to be crying or something,” I admit, hearing him walk up behind me.

“There’s no ‘supposed to’ about it.”

“A normal kid would cry,” I insist, thinking _I should have come before now_ in an attempt to kick up a sense of guilt. Nothing.

“There’s no such thing as normal. And if there was, you wouldn’t be it.”

He’s trying to make me smile, so I do, but my heart isn’t in it. “Thanks a lot.”

_What am I that I don’t feel anything?_

After another moment of silence, he sits in the grass beside me, arms resting atop his knees. He looks relaxed, but I can still see a slight tension – a sense of wariness, an _awareness_ – in the way his eyes sweep down the hill and back towards the road. “When my parents died,” he says quietly, “it took me a long time before I was anything except… numb.”

“How long?” I ask.

“Years.”

“It’s _been_ years.”

“Decades,” he amends, lifting his eyes to the sky. Appreciating the sunset, or scanning for black helicopters?

“I don’t want to wait decades to feel something.”

“I didn’t feel anything because I didn’t know what to feel. Sad. Lonely. Or just… relieved. Maybe even vindicated. It was better to just be numb.” Somewhere in the distance: a woman’s voice, a car’s engine.

“You’re not going to leave me here, are you?” I ask, giving voice to the concern that’s been nagging at me since we stepped off the plane.

He looks around the cemetery. “Here?”

I roll my eyes. “England.”

“Of course not. Unless you _want_ to stay.”

I pull up a handful of grass. It’s brittle, dry and crumbling between my fingers, as though the presence of so much death has leached all sustenance from the soil. “Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?”

“What?” He sounds alarmed now. “No. It’s just that… I know there’ve been problems. At school and everything.”

I don’t want him to know about my problems. I don’t want him to have to worry about me. “It’s just kid stuff,” I demur, although it’s not just the other students who like to give me a hard time. The teachers can’t quite explain why the daughter of a couple security consultants is able to attend the same school as the children of celebrities, politicians and diplomats, and their confusion makes them hostile.

“Kid stuff can still be hard for kids.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure you’re not a midget.”

I throw the handful of dead grass at him.

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” He looks off into the distance again, absently brushing the dried blades off his shirt. The ocean is visible as a faint glimmer on the horizon. “Growing up, I thought that if someone paid attention to you… if you were useful to them… that they had to love you. And if they didn’t, that was your fault. It was something you didn’t do. It took me a long time to get that right in my head. That there weren’t conditions. And there aren’t, Jules. Not with us.”

I look over at him and smile. It’s not much of a smile, but it’s real this time. And we sit there for a while longer, just me and my dead parents and my father.

 

(Before: 2004)

_Natalia returns to the staging house on Al Maryah Island with the wall safe codes in her pocket and blood under her nails._

_Konstantin is alone in the room. She gives him the codes and expects him to say something about Anya, but he just tosses some clothes to her and tells her to wash up. And she obeys._

_*_

_Fifteen minutes later they are walking along the marina, waiting for the boat that will take them across the strait, and Anya has still not arrived. It’s possible that the other woman’s objective has changed, that she is now expected to infiltrate Kutaiba’s inner circle. This is not information that the taciturn Konstantin is likely to share._

_Natalia is silent. You learn not to ask questions in this line of work. Questions invite interest, and interest leads to concerns, and concerns lead to the room where they make all of your questions go away._

_Natalia has not been in that room for a long time, and she would like to keep it that way._

_But Anya…_

_*_

_Two weeks later, she is ordered to speak to the General._

_He has concerns, they tell her._

_Natalia has only asked two of the girls if they have heard from Anya, but apparently that is enough. Now she knows that neither of them can be trusted. She only hopes that it is not too late to put that knowledge to good use._

_“I was only curious,” she tells the General, and this is the wrong thing to say. She is a tool, and tools do not wonder, they do not worry, they do not show empathy for other tools._

_The General strikes her across the face. There is no anger in the blow, only exasperation._

_Natalia tastes blood, and she knows that Anya must be dead. At the hands of the Emirati, or at the hands of those she called comrades. There will be a new Anya soon, young and beautiful and fated to be systematically destroyed._

_*_

_They place Natalia in a holding cell, a room without light or comfort. She does not know if they are trying to frighten her back into obedience, or if they are keeping her here while another room is prepared._

_She does not intend to wait and find out. There are too many faces she does not remember, and she realizes that no matter how good she is, one day there will be another Natalia, and she will also be damned._

_She is already nineteen, and she has never met a girl in the program older than twenty-five. One way or another she will be replaced; she will vanish, as Anya has, and no one will dare to wonder._

_*_

_She escapes that night, blood and broken bones and fire in her wake. She walks away, and she doesn’t look back._

(Before: 2008)

_Parvati enters the building wearing a stolen guard’s uniform, her black hair pulled back and pinned up beneath her hat. It’s not a disguise that will pass even cursory inspection, but anyone inclined to take a closer look will do so at the expense of his life. She has been told to leave no witnesses behind._

_She would prefer to complete her mission without the need for such drastic action, but she knows that violence will most likely be necessary. Once, when she went by another name, she might have looked forward to the dealing of death. Now she is only resigned._

_The converted warehouse is largely vacant. No subjects yet, she was assured, only a few doctors and trainers and ‘teachers’ preparing their ‘curriculum.’ It is these plans that Parvati’s handlers are most interested in. After all, how can they compete with the Russians’ new program without knowing what it entails?_

_The records room is on the third floor. The elevator is out of service so Parvati takes the stairs, stepping out into the hall boldly, thinking ‘I belong here, I am supposed to be here’ as loudly as she can, even though she has no reason to believe that, on top of being special, she is also telepathic._

_If she was telepathic, maybe she would know what happened to the guard by the records room. He is getting to his feet as Parvati approaches, one hand raised to his bloody temple. He sees her and, in his pain and confusion, does not look past the uniform. “There is an intruder,” he gasps in Russian, fumbling for the radio at his belt._

_They both notice the smoke, trickling out from beneath the door, at the same time._

_*_

_Parvati runs. She has lost her cap and her pins and her hair streams out behind her._

_The mission was a failure before it began. She was sent to find information, but someone else was sent as well. Someone intent on burning the warehouse to the ground._

_She glimpses the figure only once: a woman, lithe and lean, descending an exterior staircase as swiftly and soundlessly as an oiled shadow. Her hair seems red, but maybe that is only a trick of light from the fire._

_The fire. Parvati’s mind tries to think of other fires, reaches for the memories, but the memories are not there._

_The redhead has a bag slung over one shoulder. Parvati knows that she should pursue the woman, take whatever she has, in the hope it’s something that will salvage this night. But pursuit would mean bloodshed. No one has died tonight at her hands. She wants to keep it that way._

_Parvati watches from a safe distance as the trucks finally arrive. Men try to put the fire out._

_They fail._

 

(30)

Twenty minutes west of Bullhead City, in the narrow triangle of southern Nevada sandwiched between Arizona and California, a green sign with a reflective border declares that GAS and FOOD are available at the next exit. Natasha would prefer a highway sign promising MEANINGFUL ANSWERS or even A FEW HOURS OF SLEEP, but beggars can’t be choosers.

The sign is the last nod to modernity this side of the Sierra Nevadas. The off-ramp leads to a road probably last paved during the Eisenhower administration. The promised gas station isn’t a chrome-shiny and florescent-bright Chevron or Mobil with long bays beneath a portico-covered forecourt. Instead, four old-fashioned pumps, red and white beneath a patina of grime, are clustered around a grimy hut with a corrugated metal roof. Plastic sheeting hangs over two of the windows; man-made trash and desert debris alike lays in windblown drifts. The place looks likely to be a breeding ground for mutant cockroaches, tuberculosis, and serial killers with a penchant for hockey masks, and Natasha is happy to have filled up back in Bullhead. She drives past the station and towards the diner – a converted doublewide with low eaves, peeling vinyl skirting, and a short staircase with a rusted guardrail – and parks between a Ford truck and a late-model sedan with a dented driver’s side door.

*

Hesitating momentarily in the diner’s open doorway, she absorbs the most important details in an eye-blink: it’s a single room, divided lengthwise first by a chipped Formica counter and then by a low wall separating the eating space from the kitchen; a burly man in a dirty apron is leaning against the cold griddle, reading a paperback novel, and the only other occupant is a purse-lipped waitress in a teal  uniform whose attention is occupied by a ceiling-mounted television.

The half-dozen leatherette booths appear empty, although someone could be hunkered down in the shadowy spaces beneath the tables, or secreted behind the counter, or lurking in the dimly-lit kitchen, but this cursory inspection is the best she can do without causing alarm.

The man sees Natasha first, looking her up and down indolently before returning to his novel. The motion catches the eye of the waitress, a tall blonde in her fifties with graying roots and slumped shoulders, who frowns as though deeply offended by the appearance of a customer. “We’re closing in half an hour.” It’s barely half-past nine, thirty minutes before Manesh’s appointed meeting time, and Natasha doubts that this is a coincidence. She nods her understanding and the waitress waves at the booths. “Sit wherever. What’d you want to eat?”

Natasha has no appetite, and she’s left the rumpled romance of Americana miles back on historic Route 66, but she orders a cheeseburger anyway. She can ignore hunger if she must, the same way she can ignore pain and exhaustion for a time, but it’s still unwise to skip a meal when not absolutely necessary. So she sits in the booth furthest from the entrance, facing the door; she chews methodically on the burger, and consumes the fries without really tasting them, and she waits.

The diner’s windows are high up on the wood-paneled walls, so Natasha is unable to monitor the parking lot for danger; besides, the television – tuned to a local news program – would drown out the faint sounds of tires on crumbling asphalt or shoes on rubber-treaded stairs. Fisher’s agents could be surrounding the diner at this very moment and Natasha wouldn’t know it until they came pouring through the door. This fact should put on her edge, should make her at the very least apprehensive, but she’s too weary and dispirited to leave much room for concern. In truth, she’s less worried about an all-out assault than by the very real possibility that _no one_ will come, that this has all been a ruse, a sideshow, a trick, that Manesh is somewhere laughing at her, and that Clint is forever beyond her reach.

The meal is eaten, the plate taken away, the nightly news drawing to a close, the final page of the novel read, the waitress glaring pointedly, when – movement. The blonde speaks curtly, or starts to – “We’re closing in—“ but then she sees something that abruptly shuts her up, and she steps back behind the counter.

The new customer pauses in the doorway, much as Natasha had, taking in the salient information and discarding the rest, dismissing as threats the discomforted waitress and the less-perceptive cook, who merely switches his griddle back on with a resigned sigh. Manesh smiles at him, although it is not a real smile, only the _shape_ of a smile, and says, “I won’t be long. Just a water, please.”

The words are polite but there is something in her tone that portents trouble, a note of barely-restrained desperation, and the waitress stays where she is. Manesh shrugs, reaching back to pull the door shut, flipping the _OPEN_ sign to read _SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED_ , and turning towards Natasha.

The pistol, retrieved from the small of Natasha’s back at the first sign of motion, now lies on the padded bench between her thigh and the wall. Her palm rests against the checked grip, her finger on the familiar curve of the trigger guard. She could draw down on Kamala Manesh in one second, shoot her dead in two. Could. Can’t, though. She has information, after all. Information that Natasha desperately needs.

Besides, she is not only Kamala Manesh.

She is also Anya.

*

Natasha hadn’t known for certain from the hospital surveillance footage. The video had been gray and grainy and, viewed on a cell phone screen, too small to get more than the barest impression of familiar features. Having never encountered the infamous Kamala Manesh in either Colombia or California, she and Bruce had relied on Steve and Hill for a positive confirmation. But Natasha had wondered. The ink-black hair, the pixilated suggestion of exotic cheekbones and sloe eyes… she had wondered.

Later, the sound of the woman’s voice hadn’t been confirmation, either, because a voice could change dramatically between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five and because Manesh’s American accent was impeccable. But something about that brief, brusque conversation had turned speculation into suspicion. And now…

Now Manesh sits across from Natasha with a vague expression of distaste but no hint of recognition. She’s dressed casually but in consideration of her many physical assets – snug-fitting jeans, a chocolate-brown bomber jacket unzipped to reveal a dark blue top with a deep scoop neckline – because she has been taught every part of her body is a weapon. “You look surprised to see me,” she says coolly, still no suggestion of either Russia or India in her dialect. “I don’t know why. Between the two of us, I’d say that I stand to lose the most if this partnership doesn’t happen.”

Natasha is embarrassed by her lapse, chagrined at being caught off guard. There’s no time to wonder if Witten and Fisher had guessed at their shared past and purposely kept them apart in Villavicencio, or to speculate whether Anya’s memories are still intact, as _Aten’s_ had been. She’s here because of Clint; anything else is a distraction. “I need to know what you’ve done to him.”

_I’d say I’ve expanded his mind,_ says a voice from memory, a voice of oil and venom and forked tongues, and a sickening wave of déjà vu roils through her stomach.

Manesh doesn’t feign confusion. She speaks quickly, impatiently, as though she can hear the rhythmic tick-tick-tick of an invisible clock. “I made a suggestion to his subconscious that he was in danger. Not in danger from _you_ , understand. He came up with that all on his own. Doesn’t say a whole lot for your relationship, does it?” She folds her arms across the Formica tabletop. “Anyway. Danger. The human instinct for self-preservation is the strongest motivation there is. I also planted the suggestion that safety could be found in a specific location. When he arrived in the area I was _supposed_ to leave him a little trail of breadcrumbs straight to Fisher’s door.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I didn’t have to. He found the place on his own.”

The waitress and the cook are gone. Probably ran out a back door, jumped into their respective vehicles, and called the police. There’s not much time left to wrap up this conversation, unless Fisher’s suborned the local authorities, and that reminds Natasha of her earlier suspicions. “How did you manage all this in one night? Was the hospital staff in on it?”

Manesh snorts. “The hospital? No. I was in and out in ten minutes. This wasn’t a wipe. I wasn’t taking anything out, I was putting something _in_. Just the seed of an idea, planted after administering a drug that puts the subject into a very receptive state.”

Natasha pictures Manesh in her nurse’s garb, standing over Clint’s hospital bed, syringe in hand, like some gender-swapped Dracula to his Mina Harker. _If I had stayed with him…_ “And this drug. Is there an antidote, like there was for me?”

“Yes,” says Manesh readily, and it’s a lie, and Natasha can’t even pretend otherwise. Clint hasn’t been manipulated as thoroughly as she had been, but the kind of psychotropic drugs Manesh is describing work on a subtler, more devious level. A seeded idea, Natasha knows instinctively, an idea that the mind doesn’t even recognize as alien, will be an even more pervasive, pernicious enemy than the wall Fisher and Witten had built into _her_ brain. There will be no quick fix to this damage, if there is any fix at all.

And just as bad: Manesh doesn’t care. She hasn’t come to them in good faith, and she has no compunctions about promising the moon long enough to get her own antidote from SHIELD. Then she’ll clam up or, more likely, vanish altogether. Maybe she’s really just that ambivalent about Clint’s fate, or maybe she’s actively working to destroy him, but it really doesn’t matter. The only chance Natasha has in either case is to try and punch through Manesh’s cold indifference, to make a connection with her, and that means telling the truth. “I’m familiar with those types of drugs. They were used on both of us.”

Manesh frowns, a crease appearing in her smooth brow. “What? No, I told you: he wasn’t wiped. Fisher knew we couldn’t snatch him… that’s why she needed him to come to her. And you were never seeded in Colombia. There was no point after you’d been successfully regressed.”

“I’m not talking about Colombia,” says Natasha. “I’m talking about Russia.”

 

(31)

A couple of things happen just after ten-thirty.

First, the fire engine leaves. Smoke is still wafting from the ravaged roof and broken windows, but the firefighters are confident that the actual blaze has been extinguished. Besides, they’re needed for a structure fire down off London Bridge Road. It’s not like a city as small as Havasu has a ton of resources for this kind of thing.

“What about going in, looking for survivors?” Joey demands of the captain. “We had a report that a woman was shot around the same time the fire started.”

The captain, a wiry man in his sixties with an elaborate handlebar mustache, looks back at the remains of the building incredulously. “And you think she’s still alive?” Before Joey can muster an indignant response, the man continues. “Listen, Detective, another engine’s been dispatched from Needles, but those guys aren’t going to go poking around for dead bodies waiting for the rest of the roof to drop on top of them. They’re going to need to do a structural assessment first. Sorry,” he adds, not sounding really sorry at all, like he doesn’t really care one way or the other if Joey’s whole career goes to hell because of this entire mess.

So the fire engine leaves, and the officers who’d come with Joey to secure the scene – only to discover that the place was abandoned and nothing much seemed in need of securing – look like they’re wondering if they could do the same without getting written up.

Then: the helicopter.

It arrives in a flash of sound and light, coming in low over the ridge and landing in front of the burned-out building as though the spot was reserved for its exclusive use, blowing sand and smoke all over Joey and the uniformed jakes. A guy jumps out, dressed in a suit miraculously untouched by the debris thrown off the slowing rotors, sandy-brown hair theatrically windblown. He approaches Joey with a long, confident stride and identifies himself as “FBI Agent Bernhardt, from the Los Angeles office.”

“FBI?” asks Joey dumbly.

“I’ve spoken with your Lieutenant Godfrey,” Bernhardt continues, “and he’s agreed to turn this case over to me, at least for the time being.”

In the space of that sentence, the entire fracas goes from being a potentially career-ending Charlie Foxtrot to a highly-desirable opportunity that’s about to slip from his grasp. He can practically hear Amber’s voice urging him to engage, to be _assertive_. “How’s that work? This place is on county land, not federal.”

Bernhardt regards Joey with displeasure. He’s in his late forties, with the kind of good looks that women – with lots of giggling and eyelash-batting – refer to as _rugged_ or _masculine_ , and he’s probably used to small-town cops rolling over for him. “This _place_ , as you call it, is also the suspected hideout of a wanted criminal.”

Joey’s first thought is for Damian, but no, the guy’s small beans to an outfit like the FBI, and besides, he already served his time for the whole forgery thing. “Then we should be working together on this,” he declares, really laying on the bravado. “I’m here because I got a call from a CI who said there’d been a shooting.”

Bernhardt looks at the building for the first time, and there is a flicker of apprehension in his eyes that Joey hadn’t expected to see. “Have… have you recovered any bodies?”

“No,” says Joey, resisting the temptation to throw the mustachioed fire captain under the proverbial bus. “It’s too dangerous to go in. The whole roof could come down.”

They both hear it at the same time, a rushing, whooshing sound, and they both look towards the helicopter. The rotors are still, and the pilot has clambered out of the cockpit and is stretching his legs.

Still, the sound.

And that’s when the superheroes show up.

 

(32)

Kamala finds Romanoff’s words electrifying.

It actually feels like she has taken hold of a live wire; her pulse is racing, her hands are tingling, and she wouldn’t be much surprised to look in a mirror and discover that her hair is standing on end. “Russia,” she breathes, struck by immediate understanding. “I was… Red Room?”

She almost stumbles over the words; the Red Room remains a legend even after its death and in many ways – despite all its faults – it represents the ideal, the pinnacle of what people like Witten and Fisher have been trying to achieve ever since. If half the world has been chasing its tail trying to replicate the serum that produced Steve Rogers, then the other half – the smarter half – has been fixated on the protocols that had created the Black Widow and her ‘sisters.’

Romanoff just nods, not exactly caught up in the excitement of the moment.

“Dr. Fisher said that the Indian government…” Kamala trails off, thinking. Sometimes what Fisher has told her and what she thinks she remembers and what she’s merely _hoped_ to be true become muddled. “She said they sent me to her when their program collapsed…”

“She might have been telling the truth about that,” says Romanoff. “You vanished during a mission in Dubai. We were told you were dead, but there were higher-ups who believed you’d been kidnapped by someone who wanted to start their own program. I guess your mother country’s as likely a candidate as anybody.”

Kamala’s chest aches with the sheer force of her pounding heart. Romanoff’s words and manner makes it clear that she’s not merely relaying second-hand information. “You… you _knew_ me.”

Romanoff lifts her chin. “You were called Anya in the program. I don’t know your name from before.”

It’s one revelation too many. Kamala pushes out of the booth and strides up the diner’s center aisle, too full of energy to sit still and certain, despite knowing better, that there is somewhere she has to _be_. Romanoff doesn’t rise, however, and Kamala is forced to circle back. “You _knew_ me,” she says again, but this time the words come out riding a burble of laughter.

Romanoff, if possible, becomes even more solemn. Maybe she hadn’t expected Kamala to take such _joy_ in the discovery that she’d been a mind-controlled puppet long before she ever met Sloane Fisher, but that’s not even the exciting part. What really has Kamala spilling over with jubilation is the fact that, after years of being a nothing, a non-entity, a ghost, she now has an actual _past_ , a past that can be confirmed by an independent third party… even if that third party is as disagreeable as Natasha Romanoff.

It almost makes throwing her life away worth it.

Unless, of course, it’s a lie, a trick Romanoff thinks she can pull to get Barton back, but Kamala can’t even entertain that notion right now. “Anya,” she says, pacing away and then back once more. Is it just her imagination, or does the name feel familiar on her tongue? “The trigger antidote…”

“It could be under that name,” agrees Romanoff, still infuriatingly placid. “I have a contact at SHIELD who can find out. But first…” She slides out of the booth and Kamala tenses, expecting an attack, and there is a gun in Romanoff’s hand and Kamala reaches for her own weapon… but the other woman tucks the gun away without comment. “We should get out of here.”

Right. The waitress, the cook. Kamala laughs again. She can’t help it. “I guess I should have just shot them,” she says aloud, surprised by her oversight. “I wasn’t thinking.”

 

(33)

Maria is accustomed to being woken in the middle of the night, but that doesn’t mean she enjoys it.

She dresses in a trance, phone pressed between shoulder and ear. “No, it’s on a secure server, I can’t access it from home,” she tells Romanoff. “But I’ll go in and check it out. Anya, you said? No last name?”

“None that I know of,” says Romanoff. “And I’m sure it wasn’t the name she was born with.”

Maria grunts, pulling on her boots, fishing around for the keys to the Kawasaki. At this hour, it’ll take less time to drive down to Tektel than to phone in and arrange a ride. “But if it’s what Fisher knew her as before the wipe…”

“Exactly.”

“Give me an hour,” says Maria. “I’ll call you back.”

*

At three-thirty in the morning, Jillian Wenzel, the bottle-blonde black belt, is at home in bed, and the front desk of Tektel Systems is manned by Conner Thornton, a big guy with a boxer’s squashed nose and thick knuckles. He jumps to his feet as Maria crosses the lobby. “You’re here awfully early, ma’am.”

Maria doesn’t feel obligated to explain her presence, but she flashes him a perfunctory smile, steps into the elevator, and pushes the button for G2.

She could have checked the Institute database from her office computer, but Park’s appearance this afternoon has made her wary. She doesn’t care if IA knows she’s looking at the files from Villavicencio – it’s completely appropriate, given her position – but during the ride in it had occurred to her that those files have been already been tampered with. Romanoff’s name had been removed from the list of Fisher’s operatives almost immediately, so it was within the realm of possibility that others have been omitted as well. The physical evidence, on the other hand, has been in secure storage since Maria personally retrieved it from Colombia. If a box of ampoules labeled with the name _Anya_ ever existed, it should still be there.

_Should_.

*

_Isn’t_.

The refrigerated storeroom is still painstakingly organized, and the log shows that no one else has checked in since the drugs were brought in from Colombia. The Witten Institute isn’t a subject of interest for most agents of SHIELD, aside from Fisher and Manesh’s brazen escape. The medical aspect of the Institute’s work hasn’t elicited much curiosity, either because it’s perceived as a failure… or because no one high-up enough in the organization to warrant access wants to be seen considering brainwashing as a viable offensive tactic.

There are many names here, and even more boxes of vials without names, and Maria feels her frustration building up all over again. She thinks about keeping her promise to visit Ajax, but she knows a second interview would be every bit as unproductive as the first.

So she rides the elevator back up, locks herself into her office, and calls Romanoff back as promised. “Nothing. If Fisher kept Manesh’s meds on hand, they’re not under ‘Anya.’”

“I didn’t really think they would be,” says Romanoff. “But I had to be sure.”

Both women are silent for a long moment. Maria suspects that Romanoff is being taciturn because Manesh is within earshot, and as for her… well, she isn’t sure what to say, other than the obvious: “Even if it is here, even if we found it, the odds that she’d be true to her word…”

“I know,” says Romanoff quietly. “But if I don’t do everything I can…”

“Does that mean you have another idea?”

Romanoff hesitates. “Yes,” she says at last, her reluctance obvious. “Manesh was… someone else. Before the Red Room got to her. Christopher Artemiev was the one to bring her in, and back then he was only working out of a handful of countries, mainly Southeast Asia, China… and India.”

Maria leans back in her chair, squinting up at the ceiling without really seeing it, letting the chain of cause and effect play through her mind. “You think _Artemiev_ would have known her real name?”

“I’m sure he _knew_ it. The question, is would he have told them? He was known for enjoying his… little secrets.”

Maria makes a face. She knows the stories about Artemiev and is duly repulsed by them. “Okay. Best-case scenario. Say he knew it, and he told them, and they put it on file somewhere. That was almost twenty years ago. SHIELD doesn’t have those records.”

“SHIELD doesn’t,” says Romanoff. “But… I do.”

“What?”

“I’ve already spoken to Steve,” she continues evasively. “He should be about half an hour out. But he’ll need help decoding the drive…”

“What drive?” demands Maria, although she already knows.

“The computer drive from Volgograd,” says Romanoff grudgingly. “It’s in Ohio.”

 

(34)

So, here’s the thing: intellectually, Joey knows that all that stuff in New York City actually happened; it’s just that, emotionally, none of it seemed _real_ before.

Maybe it’s because he’s lived in Mohave County all his life, or maybe it’s because movies with their slick special effects have desensitized people to reality, but every time he saw footage of the flying alien Seadoos and those giant monster whale things and the freaking _hole in the sky_ over Stark Tower, he had to forcibly remind himself that it wasn’t a movie, and that no conspiracy involving millions of New Yorkers and tens of thousands of tourists would possibly hold up for more than five seconds.

But he never believed it, not in his gut, until now.

The first guy lands – _lands_ – in a cloud of sand and dust that rivals the chopper’s, and when everything settles Joey sees that, yeah, it’s that one, Mr. Thunder and Lightning himself. He’s more prepossessing than he’d seemed on all that grainy home camera footage, not to mention really damn tall – and is he actually wearing armor? And carrying a hammer? – but not as intimidating as one might have expected. He’s just this big, buff, blond guy who looks like he stepped out of a Renaissance Faire… if you overlook the fact that he just _fell out of the sky_.

Then – with more noise and a lot more wind – comes the second one, all clanking flanks and pneumatic joints, and _now_ Joey feels himself starting to get flustered because, shit, it’s Tony Stark, and he might not be from some other planet but he’s a billionaire and a celebrity and _I will not ask him for an autograph, I will not, will not, will not…_

Bernhardt steps forward. The fed doesn’t look half as badass anymore, but he also doesn’t look like he’s about to go into a swoon, so points to him. “Mr. Stark,” he says formally. “Mr…. Thor. I’d ask what you two were doing in the neighborhood, but I think I can guess.”

_I_ , thinks Joey, _will never be that cool._

“We are searching for a colleague,” says Thor, and his voice has a deep bass rumble that Joey can feel in his sternum.

Stark steps forward, his helmet folding back on itself until his face is revealed, cheekbone to cheekbone, forehead to chin. “And you are?”

“Charles Bernhardt, FBI,” says the agent, coloring slightly.

“No… I meant, why are you _here_?”

Bernhardt hesitates. It’s only for a second, but it’s long enough to be obvious even to Joey. “Sloane Fisher,” he says at last.

“What about her?”

“She’s a wanted fugitive.”

“A fugitive from SHIELD.”

Bernhardt frowns. “A fugitive from the law. I won’t pretend that SHIELD’s getting an A-plus in inter-agency cooperation – they’re not – but Dr. Fisher and her accomplice went missing over U.S. soil and, apparently, set up shop _on_ U.S. soil. That’s the sort of thing that the FBI is very interested in.”

It sounds like a pretty thin explanation to Joey. Stark shrugs, however, apparently content now that he’s gotten a rise out of the agent, and steps towards the building. “JARVIS isn’t picking up any signs of life,” he says after a moment. “What the hell happened here, Chuck?”

Bernhardt looks to Joey, who immediately starts sweating. He’s been racking his brain, trying to think if the name _Sloane Fisher_ means anything to him, and he’s coming up empty and Iron Man and an alien demigod are staring at him like he should have had a report typed and ready and _oh my God, Joseph, get a grip_. “I had a CI – uh, a criminal informant – and he called me, said there’d been a fire and an explosion and shooting…”

Stark glances at Thor, waving a metal-gloved hand towards the open front door. “One of us should probably…”

“Indeed,” Thor nods, and without further comment or preparation he strides through the doorway in completely disregard of smoke inhalation, collapsing roofs or mad gunmen.

“He said that shooter was someone named Barton,” continues Joey, desperate to be useful, and he earns a sharp look from both Stark and Bernhardt, “and that when he showed up he had a bow.” He’s not a complete idiot; there’s only one _colleague_ that Thor could possibly have been referring to. “That’s him, isn’t it? The other guy who was in New York with you. The press calls him Hawkeye.”

Stark turns away, which as far as Joey is concerned is a confirmation. “What’d you find?” he asks, addressing no one in particular, and after a second of confusion Joey realizes that he must be talking to Thor inside the building.

Bernhardt is silent. Watching. Waiting.

A shadow fills the doorway and then steps through it, a shadow that is Thor with a body in his arms, a body shrouded in red fabric that had comprised his cape. Bernhardt sucks in a breath and steps forward, falters, stops.

“I found the… remains of one other person,” says Thor, looking discomforted as he kneels, placing the figure on the ground. “A woman, I believe. Badly burned. But it appears that this one died in an area untouched by the fire.”

He pulls the fabric back. Bernhardt abruptly turns aside, walks away with those long, confident strides, and Joey wonders if he’s going somewhere to vomit in private. But no… he’s headed back to his chopper.

Stark looks down at the face of the dead woman. She’s young, blonde, and rather pretty… or she had been, prior to being shot in the head. “Well. That changes things.”

Joey shakes his head, trying to stir up a few brain cells that appear to not be pulling their own weight. “It does? Why?”

“Because,” says Stark grimly, “that’s Sloane Fisher.”


	10. Part Ten

** PART TEN **

_And what the dead had no speech for, when living, they can tell you, being dead: the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living._

_\- T.S. Eliot_

(Before: 2003)

_“Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here?”_

_The prisoner does not turn from his contemplation of the sky through the narrow window. There had been few windows in C-Max, and the prisoner had sometimes gone days without seeing the sky. Every morning since his transfer he wakes with the sun on his face, and it is glorious. “I do not care who you are, much less why you are here.”_

_“You should,” said his visitor. “I’m the reason you’re here now, instead of rotting in 23-hour a day solitary.”_

_Now he has the prisoner’s interest. “That was you? How?”_

_His visitor smiles. “I’m a well-respected psychiatrist with many friends in the Ministry of Correctional Services,” he says dryly. “I convinced them that you were no longer a threat.”_

_The prisoner frowns. “I was never a threat, not to them, not to anyone else. I am a patriot. A protector. They locked me up for wanting to protect—”_

_“I understand,” says the visitor quickly. His smile is ingratiating, but his green eyes know too much. “And some of us – many of us – believe you were right. If we abide by the decisions of the old fools on the Council, sooner or later we will all burn.”_

_The prisoner turns from the window. He is intrigued but eager not to show it. There is always the chance that this is a trap, that Mbeki and Skosana are trying to catch him in an act of imagined rebellion. Those in power will always fear the powerful, as they fear their inevitable fall. “And yet the Council is out there,” he says carefully, “and I am in here.”_

_“You’re in here,” agrees the visitor. “For now.”_

 

(Before: 2004)

_She strikes the match and drops it on a pile of old clothes. The fabric catches quickly, and her breath is stolen away by her own daring._

_“I saw what you did,” said the nun. “I want you because you are special.”_

_The memories, jumbled and fragmented, knock together like bits of flotsam washed up in the wake of a passing ship._

_*_

_At first they try to reason with her. They speak of destiny, national pride, and serving her people. But she has no pride, and she has no people, because she is no one. She has been no one since her last day in the Lotus House. She will not hear reason because she has embraced unreason._

_They speak of destiny, but she understands the vagaries of fate in a way they never will._

_When reason fails, it is followed by pain._

_*_

_She was Devi, then Anya, and now they call her Parvati, but mostly she is no one in particular._

 

(35)

Clint wakes with a headache, his back pressed against something cold and unyielding, a strange pressure just above his right elbow, but for a moment all he can do is appreciate the fact that he slept without dreaming.

He opens his eyes and finds himself staring up at a concrete slab mottled with lime and water stains so complex, so teasingly abstract, that he spends a few seconds trying to pick out a picture in the streaks and whirls. Then he looks to his right and realizes that he is being watched.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hello.” The girl is sitting atop a large black truck full of bow-repair supplies, clothing and other odds and ends, her sock-clad feet swinging a couple feet above the ground, eating an energy bar. She watches with clinical interest as he winces, pushing himself into a sitting position. He glances at his watch: just after one in the morning, so he’s only been out for a couple hours.

They’d made it into Vegas, abandoning the Jeep on the strip where it was most likely to be towed – the harder it was for their pursuers to track it down, the better – and brought the kid to his cache: one of about a hundred indoor units at a nondescript self-storage facility a few blocks off the main drag.

Clint remembers climbing a flight of stairs, weariness dragging on him like weights on his ankles, keying in a six-digit code to access the unit, rolling up the metal door, rolling it down again, and then… nothing. He must have finally succumbed to the sedative, collapsing onto the slab floor. And yet, sitting up he notices a folded-up blanket that had been placed beneath his head. Remembering the pressure in his arm, he looks down to find a white gauze bandage covering the injection site.

Clint peels part of the bandage back. Skin that had been smeared with dried blood – maybe he’d pulled away from Jason just in time, ripping the flesh but avoiding a full dose – is now clean, and covered in something that smells like antibiotic cream.

He looks at the girl. She looks back at him, eyebrows raised, as though daring him to comment.

He sighs, rests his arms atop his knees, and says, “My name’s Clint,” because he can’t think of anywhere else to start. At least as far as he can remember they haven’t been formally introduced.

She finishes the bar, crumpling the foil wrapper between her small hands.

“Do you have a name?” he asks.

She nods, and is silent for so long that he starts thinking that she took the question literally and he’s going to need to rephrase it, but then she says, “Julie Banks.”

“Julie,” he echoes, and she nods again. He indicates the bandage on his arm. “This was you.”

She meets his eyes unflinchingly. “I didn’t know how long you’d be asleep. I thought it might get infected.”

The strangeness in her voice, which had eluded him in the Jeep, is obvious now that the sedative is out of his system. “You… you’re British, aren’t you?”

Her brow furrows. “Are you really just now noticing that?”

_Right_ , Clint recalls. _Smartass._

He gets to his feet, trying not to hobble too much, and looks around. It’s a mid-sized unit, about fifteen feet on each side, so he doesn’t have to look for very long. The doors to the two smaller cabinets where he keeps first aid and other emergency supplies – like food – are both hanging open, their padlocks lying discarded on the floor.

A larger cabinet is still secured by a combination lock. When he opens it, he finds the keys to the padlocks sitting on the top shelf, right where he expected them. Underneath: a few racks of arrows, a spare bow, a couple of handguns, two Dragon Skin ballistic vests and an array of smoke and gas grenades. None of these items seem to have been moved.

He looks again at the padlocks, and then back at the girl. _Julie_. She’s holding up a twist of metal that must have once been a paperclip. “I found it in Dr. Fisher’s office,” she explains. “I thought it might come in handy.”

Shaking his head, Clint returns to the emergency supplies. He gets an energy bar for himself and two bottles of water, which were stored on an upper shelf, out of the girl’s reach. “Is that what they’re teaching in schools over there these days?”

Julie receives the water eagerly and without a word of thanks. “I go to an all-girl Catholic school,” she says, as though this is explanation enough. Her eyes drift back to the weapons locker as she untwists the bottle’s plastic cap, and she chews on her lower lip for a moment before speaking again. “You’re one of _them_.”

“Them?” he echoes. That sounds ominous. What will he do if she starts shrieking about being kidnapped?

But there’s no screaming, just a long drink of water. “You know what I mean. One of the Avengers.”

He must look surprised, because her expression changes quickly from contemplative to scornful. “I’m from London, not Outer Mongolia. Of course, I expect they’ve heard of you there, too.” She narrows her eyes. “You’re him, aren’t you? They call you Hawkeye on TV.”

Clint smiles ruefully. There were leaks after New York, of course, because SHIELD is run by human beings and human beings are fallible and greedy for attention and recognition and _importance_ , and even though most people were properly distracted by Stark, Banner, Thor and Steve, part of the problem with the internet and the twenty-four hour news cycle was that there was ample opportunity to go prying into everyone’s identities. So now the nickname that had become a stage name that had become his codename  – in the sort of ironic, hang-a-lantern-on-it way that he’d come to expect from Coulson –was compromised. Natasha’s too. They were Hawkeye and the Black Widow, a couple of mortal hangers-on in the pantheon of real-life superheroes.

Few people had cared. Unfortunately Fisher and Witten had been paying attention, and Natasha had suffered for it.

_Natasha_. The thought of her sends a pang through his chest. He forgets to answer the girl’s question, almost forgets she’s there at all, until she demands, “What’s your power?” watching him with such a penetrating stare that he feels like an amoeba on a microscope slide.

He scowls. “Being sassed by seven year-old girls, apparently,” he retorts, standing again. There’s aspirin in one of the open cabinets and he washes down three. It’s more than the recommended dose on the back of the bottle, but the condition of his stomach lining is not a real high priority at the moment. “Sorry, kid,” he says brusquely, returning to the weapons locker. “If you’re looking for superpowers, you’re talking to the wrong Avenger.”

If that’s even what he is anymore. If he was even that to _begin_ with.

When he turns around, a bow and collapsible quiver in hand, Julie is still watching him, appraising him, _reading_ him in that odd, thoughtful way of hers, and she says, “Well, you’re the Avenger who came for me, so I suppose you’re the only one who matters.”

Clint feels himself flush, more out of guilt than misplaced pride, and points to the black trunk. She gets the hint and slides off, moving aside as he opens the trunk and roots around. A change of clothes is in order, since he still reeks of sweat and smoke. “I wasn’t there to rescue you,” he says slowly. “Not on purpose. I was… looking for someone else.”

“Natasha?”

His head snaps up. “How do you know that?”

She raises her eyebrows again. “You were talking about her a bit on the drive here, but I couldn’t make much sense of it. Is she your girlfriend?”

Clint isn’t real sure what universe he’s living in right now – the one where he spent the best week of his life with Natasha in Germany, crashed back to reality, then got blown up and dumped in New Mexico, or the one in which the last month of his life has been a complete lie – and when he thinks about it like that he’s not entirely sure which one he wants to be living in because they both sound like crap. However, he’s definitely not living in a universe where he’s about to take his pants off in front of a seven year old girl, so a new shirt will have to do. He makes a spinning motion with his finger and she obligingly turns her back on him, although not without rolling her eyes in a way that implies he’s being immature.

“She’s… someone I care about,” he says eventually, tugging the smoke and sweat-stained shirt over his head and pulling on a clean one. He takes a black, military-style field jacket from the trunk for good measure, since the longer sleeves will hide his bandaged arm. “I thought Fisher might be holding her there.”

Julie turns back around. “The only other woman I saw was that cow Sophia,” she says, looking pensive again. “You’re Barton, so… so she must be Romanoff. They were talking about you.”

Clint returns to the weapons locker. The false back of the cabinet, when freed from two tiny latches, swings forward, revealing a hidden space not more than two feet deep. On the floor is a metal box containing a few identities and a couple thousand dollars.

“Mr. DeGrasse said you’d worked with her for five years and didn’t have any complaints,” Julie continues, “but according to Dr. Fisher that’s just because of how she looks.”

Clint isn’t sure whether to be annoyed or amused. “Fisher said that?”

“It was _implied_.”

“You have an awfully good memory.”

The girl puffs up a little. “I know.”

“Hm. Modest, too.”

He crams a few more supplies into a backpack, tucks a M1911-A2 pistol into his waistband at the small of his back, relocks the cabinets, and takes one more look around the storage space. His gaze comes to rest on the girl, who is watching him expectantly. “Come on,” he tells her. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Good,” she says gratefully. “I _really_ need to go to the bathroom.”

 

(36)

Jason is a diagnosed agoraphobe – or he had been, before Sloane cured him.

She’d been waiting for him the day he got out of the state prison up in Golden Valley, just sitting in her car in front of the bus stop with the AC cranked up as high as it would go, like she had nowhere better to be. “I’m a psychiatrist. I’d like to help you,” she’d told him. She’d seemed genuine – and she was definitely cute, and so was the Indian chick she had playing chauffeur – so Jason had gotten into the car and never looked back.

It didn’t occur to him to wonder why anyone would want to help him, or what that help would entail. It seemed that lately he’d taken a lot of crap from karma, and it was about time he got some of his own back. When, eventually, he explained this philosophy to Sloane, she had approved. “I think deep-down you care a great deal about fairness,” she observed, and Jason had liked that. He suspected that he had a strong – albeit deeply buried – commitment to justice that no judge or prosecutor had ever fully appreciated. After all, he never stole from people who were worse off than he was, and he’d always divided up the spoils equally with his crew. When there _were_ spoils, of course.

“I believe,” Sloane had said after several therapy sessions in her weird little clinic in the desert, “that you suffer from agoraphobia… a fear of open spaces. Subconsciously, you commit crimes not because you desire wealth but because you know that when you’re caught, you’ll be taken somewhere safe, enclosed, and familiar. Above all things you desire a controlled environment.”

Jason had never thought about it like that before, but it did explain why he’d gotten busted so many times. He didn’t get away with his crimes because – subconsciously, like she said – he didn’t _want_ to get away with them. _This_ was the kind of doctor-talk he could get excited about, the kind built on logic and reason instead of big fancy words that always seemed to indicate that he was a bad person. He wasn’t a bad person. He liked puppies and he didn’t mow down old ladies in crosswalks, even when he had a green light. He was enchanted with the idea that someone as lovely and brilliant as Sloane Fisher could see the truth in him so easily.

Sloane was insightful and clever and self-contained. It was part of the reason he’d fallen in love with her, even before she’d cured him of his agoraphobia. After that… well, it seemed like he just owed so damn much to her, like even if he spent the rest of his life doing everything she wanted it still wouldn’t be enough.

It’s his love for Sloane that sends him out onto the dark desert road, really testing his imperviousness to wide open spaces for the first time. The night sky stretches over the desert like the lid of a pan, and Jason feels his heart start to beat more quickly, or maybe that’s just because he’s remembering how Sloane had totally seemed to _lose_ it back there… although, standing in the dirt road in front of the clinic, covered in dust and ash and having lost her high heels, she’d still looked amazing. She’d started shrieking about finding Kamala, and the French guy had yelled back about finding the _girl_ , and Sloane had cursed at him and said, “Who cares about the kid? There’s more where she came from!”

“Of course you don’t care – you’re not the one who paid for her,” the Frenchie had shouted back, and Jason was bemused at the idea of secret organizations worrying about funding and budgets and things like that. It never happened in the movies. “That _kid_ represents a substantial investment.”

“So does _this_!” Sloane had screamed, waving at the smoldering clinic. “I need Kamala more than you need the girl.”

Frenchie had been unmoved. “And your other little toy?” he’d asked scornfully. “Damian, is that his name? Where’s he run off to?”

Sloane had scowled, but she’d looked more embarrassed than angry. “I don’t control him yet – he’s not _mine_ yet – because you told me that you’d arranged for the girl and that _she_ was the priority.”

This had all been incredibly odd and confusing to Jason, whose skull was still aching from where that asshole Barton had clocked him with the butt of the rifle, so he’d looked over at the other muscle, Frenchie’s black bodyguard, to see if he was just as lost… but the guy was gone. And so was another one of the Jeeps. That meant one left, plus the SUV the two visitors had come in, and the answer seemed obvious to Jason. “I’ll find Kamala,” he’d said eagerly, interrupting Sloane mid-tirade. “She’s got one of our cars, so I can track her. You think… you think Barton got her, too?”

Sloane had stared at him as though she’d completely forgotten his existence, which kind of hurt, but after a moment she nodded. “Maybe it’s better if he has,” she’d said icily. “The only other option seems to be that they were working together, and if that’s true…” Her lip had curled as she glanced at Frenchie, as though daring him to comment. “Go. Find her. Make her explain everything. If she knows where Barton is… make her tell you. And then find _him_.”

“You want me to bring him back in?” Jason had asked, impressed by her tenacity.

But Sloane had shaken her head. “No. I want you to kill the bastard. I don’t care how. Just kill him.”

“I thought you wanted his brain,” Frenchie had observed, seeming not to realize the fine line he was walking.

“Screw his brain,” Sloane had said flatly; framed by smoke and ash and ruin, she was _gorgeous,_ like an avenging angel. “I just want him dead.”

*

He’s been on the road for hours now, watching his phone, following the red blinking light that represents Kamala’s car. It’s been all over the damn place, always one step ahead of him, from Needles to Bullhead to Kingman and then back down Highway 40 again, like she’s driving in a damn circle, and she’s not picking up her phone, and then it occurs to Jason…

She’s not the one behind the wheel. She’s ditched the sedan and paid someone to drive it around the desert, or she just left it where she knew it’d get stolen. It’s what he would do, if it was him.

But it’s not him. He wouldn’t betray Sloane like that. He can’t even contemplate that. He owes her so much.

He doesn’t want to return to the clinic and admit his failure, but for some reason now Sloane’s not picking up her phone either, and he isn’t sure what to do. The idea that she’s not available to provide him with clarity, to give him direction, threatens to lift the lid on this whole cursed night and let the void come rushing in.

Jason shudders. _Find Kamala. Kill Barton_. Those are his orders. He has to obey.

 

(37)

East from the diner: back towards Bullhead and what passes for civilization. Two police cruisers, lights flashing but sirens silent, pass them heading west. Natasha slows, expecting trouble, watching the rearview mirror for the tale-tell flash of taillights, but the police continue without pause.

*

They pass into Bullhead and then turn north towards Lake Mohave. Like Havasu to the south, Lake Mohave is really just a widening of the Colorado River; the Davis Dam and its attendant power plant are lit at night by banks of floodlights as blindingly bright as the desert sun.

Parking the Chevy on the Arizona side of the border, in a shadowy area within sight of the switchyard, they had pause to await further information. Well, Natasha waits while Manesh sleeps.

The other woman is slumped in the passenger’s seat, eyes closed and mouth slightly open, breathing steadily. It could be a ruse, but Natasha’s gut tells her otherwise. It seems her decision to tell the truth had been the right one; it _has_ bonded them, even to the point where Kamala Manesh feels secure enough to fall asleep within arm’s reach of a former enemy. As though their shared past makes them… what? Comrades? _Sisters_?

Natalia had liked Anya, but Natalia hadn’t been an especially decent person. And in the intervening years, it seems, Kamala has gone even further down the road of callous amorality, no doubt helped along by what has been done to her in the name of science and power and national security.

Not that she’s entirely without her own code of ethics. When they had gotten into the rented Chevy and Natasha had accused Kamala of stealing the only other vehicle in the parking lot – a green Subaru with a _COEXIST_ bumper sticker – Manesh had been quick to set the record straight. “It wasn’t stealing, it was _trading_. I left the owner the keys to the Hyundai and a note that says she’s free to use it as long as she needs to. And when the cops show up they’ll find it here, good as new, and give it back to her, and then she’ll have two cars.”

Natasha hadn’t bothered to educate her on the finer points of the law.

Now she sits in silence, in darkness relieved by the halo of light from the switchyard, and she waits. She doesn’t sleep, not because she isn’t tired and not because she’s especially wary of Manesh, who seems likely to die without SHIELD help, but because she’s irrationally convinced that by resting she will somehow break faith with Clint, that her sleepless determination is the only thing keeping him alive.

_Stupid. You don’t even know if he is alive._

She glances at Manesh and hardens her heart. _You’re not my sister, and I would kill you in a second if it would bring him back_.

*

Her cell phone, set to vibrate, buzzes against her hip. Natasha checks the ID, takes a steadying breath, and answers the call. “Stark.”

For once, he doesn’t waste her time with preamble or one-liners. “We found Fisher’s new place. It’s on the outskirts of Lake Havasu City, a couple miles off 95.” The crisp, businesslike tone, the lack of enthusiasm that would have indicated success, sends a prickle of suspicion across Natasha’s scalp. “Barton isn’t here. In fact, no one’s here except us chickens, the local cops, and until a few minutes ago, someone from the FBI.”

Natasha tries to tell herself that this is good news. They’ve found the viper’s lair; they’re on the right path and might not even need Manesh and her treacherous half-truths. “Then we just haven’t found the right place yet,” she replies, her voice straining with false cheer. “Fisher must have him somewhere else.”

“Fisher’s dead,” says Stark.

Natasha closes her eyes.

“She was shot in the head. There’s another body here too, also a woman. We think. As for this not being the right place…” He sighs heavily.  “Someone rigged the roof and the generator to blow, and JARVIS analyzed the chemical residue – it matches the stuff Barton uses in those exploding arrows of his.”

She opens her eyes. She’s glad – fiercely, desperately glad – that Clint wasn’t so far gone as to think he could just walk into Fisher’s web and sit down for a nice little chat, that he had gone in prepared, taken the fight to her… and yet she’s also as terrified as she has been at any point in this endless day. “Do you think he killed her?” she asks quietly.

Stark’s response is unexpectedly diplomatic. “It’s not like it wouldn’t have been justified.”

_That isn’t what I meant_ , thinks Natasha, but the words won’t come.

*

When Natasha ends the call and glances over at Manesh, she finds that the other woman is awake. She hasn’t moved, but her eyes are open, dark and liquid with resignation.

“Fisher’s dead, isn’t she?” Not bothering to wait for confirmation, Manesh continues: “You know, I never actually thought about it like this before, but… from the moment she made us, her operatives, she knew that if anything ever happened to her, we’d be doomed.” She sighs ruefully. “What a bitch.”

Natasha pushes open the door and gets out of the Chevy, possessed of the same manic energy that had animated Manesh at the diner. She paces away, towards the bright hum of the switchyard but still safely in the shadows, always in the shadows, and after a moment Manesh follows. “What’s the matter with you? _I’m_ the doomed one here, remember?”

“We needed her,” says Natasha, not looking at Manesh. Her hands are clenched and she can’t _unclench_ them, and she suspects that if she laid eyes on a suitable target her fists would fly of their own volition.

“To do what?” Manesh is close behind her. Foolishly close. “To snitch on Lycaon?”

Natasha turns sharply, hands still formed into weapons. “To fix Clint.”

For a moment, just a moment, Manesh keeps up the act. Her brow creases and she begins, “But the antidote…” Then she sees something in Natasha’s face and goes silent, sliding back half a step.

The two women watch each other for several long seconds – wariness on one side, loathing on the other – and then Manesh shrugs. “Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying.”

Anger is like acid, eating away at Natasha’s self-control, burning in her fists and in her throat until her voice is barely more than a whisper. “There is no antidote for what’s been done to him, is there?”

Manesh shoves her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket. Maybe her hands are cold, or maybe she’s reaching for a gun, so Natasha unthinkingly turns sideways to present the smallest possible target. But Manesh seeks to wound with words alone: “Not the kind that comes in a bottle,” she admits, adding in unsympathetic afterthought, “but… you know. He’s tough.”

The sheer inadequacy of this statement, even more than its careless delivery, drives Natasha closer to the brink, closer to the light. It’s dangerous; someone on the dam or looking through a window might catch a glimpse of her figure, and would surely jump to the conclusion that no tourist, no matter how big a fan of the Bureau of Reclamation, would be loitering around a power plant at one in the morning.

_Of course he’s tough_ , she thinks with despair, and that’s part of the problem, because he’s tough and he’s stubborn and if he’s determined to stick with this sick fantasy she has no idea how to reach him; if his mind is so warped that he can’t recognize the truth when he sees it – can’t recognize _her_ when they’re standing face to face – then she doesn’t know what to do next. And now Fisher is dead.

Her eyes burn with the heat and pressure of tears unshed, because if she cries it will mean she’s weak, and if she cries it will mean she’s already lost him.

Manesh says something but Natasha isn’t listening; she makes herself turn around, counting on the blazing lights of the switchyard to backlight her face and blur her features. “What did you say?”

“I said, he’s just a man,” replies Manesh, speaking slowly and with exaggerated care. “Look at you. Look at _both_ of us. We could have any guy we wanted. What makes him so special? I mean, there’s the sex, I’ll grant you that one, but it’s not like he’s the only person on this planet with a—“

“I love him,” says Natasha, surprised that the words come out easily, without inducing either mental anguish or physical pain. How unfair that it seems so obvious now, standing here without him; how cowardly it makes her feel. She hadn’t said it during their week in Germany, that week they’d pretended that they could have quiet, domestic, _normal_ lives, when she’d slept every night by his side, waking every morning in his arms. She’d been able to deny it as he lay there in that hospital bed. Now that they’re separated by miles and madness, however, it all becomes as simple and necessary as drawing breath. She loves him.

Manesh gives a short laugh, as though in anticipation of a punch line that never comes. “He doesn’t love you,” she says pitilessly. “Maybe he loves this princess-trapped-in-the-tower version of you he’s created, sure, but he doesn’t seem too crazy about the real thing.”

“That was your doing.”

Is Manesh genuinely offended by this, or is it still part of the act? “I suggested the threat, but I didn’t give it a name. _He_ did. Do you think if he really cared for you, if he really felt _safe_ with you, he would believe the things he does? He doesn’t even recognize your face anymore, Natasha. You’re an impostor, remember? A fraud. You’re Aten.”

The words hit Natasha like a blow. “How do you… you were _listening_ to us?”

“Of course.”

Natasha has run surveillance more times than she can count, but she’s surprised at how awful it feels to be on the receiving end of such scrutiny. She feels exposed, violated. _There’s the sex, I’ll grant you that…_ She moves towards the car, but Manesh is between her and the open driver’s door. “Get out of my way, or I will _move you_ out of my way.”

“Where are you going?”

“That’s none of your damn business.”

Once again Manesh looks wounded. “I’m not saying these things to be cruel. I’m saying them because you need to hear the truth.”

“I think you’ve done plenty already.”

“I was _following orders_ ,” Manesh snaps, her expression darkening.

Now it’s Natasha’s turn to laugh. “If that was true, if Fisher’s hold on you was really that tight, you wouldn’t even be here right now. You did what you did to him because you _wanted_ to, either because you’re a psychopath or because you hate him…”

“I don’t hate him!” Manesh exclaims, pressing one hand to her chest, fingers splayed. “I _needed_ him. I thought he could _save_ me.”

The wretchedness in her voice stops Natasha, even plucks a note of sympathy from one ragged heartstring. She recalls her time as Aten, and although the memories are often vague and discomforting they resonate with the other woman’s declaration. “It’s not that easy.”

Manesh holds her pose for another moment, breathing hard, maybe counting each heartbeat as it throbs beneath her palm… and then she composes herself, letting her hand drop to her side as she moves away from the car. “I thought, at the very least, if I got him away from you I’d have a shot,” she says, her voice dull with resignation. “What about Rogers and Hill?”

Natasha shrugs. “Maybe they’ll find your real name. Maybe they won’t. I’m honestly past caring.”

She watches Manesh as she walks back to the car, expecting one last, desperate attack, but again the only weapons in play are words. Manesh waits until Natasha is in the driver’s seat, is reaching out to pull the door closed, and then she says, “Did Stark say if they found the girl?”

Natasha freezes and looks up. She does not ask the question Manesh wants her to ask, but the question is already there between them. _What girl?_

There is challenge in Manesh’s dark eyes now, no hint of acceptance or defeat. “It’s part of the reason Lycaon got Fisher back on her feet so quickly. He has a new project for her. He wants his own Black Widow, from scratch. Obviously it’s an endeavor without much payoff in the short-term, considering her age, but Lycaon… he has vision. The girl was supposed to be brought in some time today. Did they find her?”

Icy fear trembles down the length of Natasha’s spine. “The place was abandoned,” she says hoarsely, lips and tongue and throat suddenly as dry as desert sand. “Just Fisher and someone else, another woman, both dead.”

“Hmm. Sophia never did know how to keep her head down,” says Manesh. “If everyone else is gone, DeGrasse must have the girl.”

Yes, that is definitely challenge in her eyes, challenge and a hint of triumph, too sad and weak to be expressed in a smile but evident from the tilt of her chin, from the cool, unblinking stare. She wants Natasha to ask _who is DeGrasse_ or a dozen other questions; she wants Natasha to know she is still a person of worth and a source of vital information.

Or not. This could be as false as Manesh’s promise of an easy cure for Clint.

But a girl. A girl. Would they name her Katya or Yelena or Natalia for old time’s sake?

“If you lie to me again,” says Natasha, “I’ll kill you.”

Now Manesh does smile. “You won’t have to. Just wait a few days and Sloane Fisher’s ghost will do it for you.”

 

(38)

With sunrise more than three hours away, the woods around Alum Creek Park are as dark as any primeval forest, and Steve reminds himself that a normal human would be forced to stumble between the trees blindly, navigating almost completely by touch.

It’s something he does sometimes: making a point to consider how things are for regular people, men and women who lack his gifts, not because he enjoys lording his physical superiority over them but because he doesn’t want to _forget_. He doesn’t want to lose the memory and, thereby, lose another fragile connection with the rest of the human race.

His eyes adapt to darkness with the ease of something nocturnal; his balance, as he climbs over fallen boughs and navigates small rivulets, is so perfect that he barely makes a sound through rock and water and fallen leaf. He moves between the maple, beech and sycamore and remembers another time, not so long ago, when the trees were of a different variety and the tang of eucalyptus was in his nose, when a man under his protection died – and he was a bad man, a monster in human form, but that didn’t make Steve’s failure any less complete.

He emerges from the treeline and pauses to reconnoiter. There are a few spots of light in the distance: a domed tent glowing from within, like a lightning bug. A small yellow lamp over the door of a distant bathhouse. But this is the very edge of the campground, and it is very late, and all is quiet as Steve approaches the Skyline Aljo.

Maria is sitting on the bottom-most step. She rises when she sees him – or, more likely, hears him – but not in surprise or alarm. “What took you so long?” she asks, at the same time that he wonders aloud, “How did you get here so fast?”

He’d had the greater distance to travel, of course, but he’d already been well on his way when Natasha told Hill that she had sensitive information regarding Russian intelligence, information she had acquired and concealed four years ago, information that she had hidden somewhere SHIELD had never thought to look for it.

“I had to chopper in,” says Maria, adding dryly, “we don’t keep a lot of Quinjets in the middle of New York City. Besides, requisitioning one would have drawn too much attention. What’s your excuse?”

“I had to find an alternate landing site.” The access road Natasha had mentioned had been too narrow to be a viable option; JARVIS had helpfully located a more suitable meadow a mile and a half to the northeast. “Wait… where did _you_ land?”

“On the main road,” says Maria, as though this is obvious. “About half a mile west of the campground.”

The area is rural but not abandoned, and one of the first things Steve learned about this century is that there’s always _someone_ watching. “Isn’t _that_ going to draw attention?”

“It’s the middle of the night. And if anyone asks questions, we’ll say we were searching for a missing hiker.”

Steve shakes his head, not because he disagrees with Maria’s methods but because her tone seems to indicate that such methods are more than just sensible, they’re _obvious_ , while his own instinct to lie isn’t nearly as well-developed. If someone had walked out into the meadow as Steve prepared to leave the jet, if that someone had demanded to know his business, Steve would probably have identified himself without thinking twice.

Along with the night-vision and the balance, it’s not something he takes pride in. In this time, in this place, honesty is a liability. When eyes are everywhere, sometimes the truth must be held in reserve. And even in his own time – before the cube and the crash and the decades-long ice nap – plenty of secrets had been kept. Hell, he’d been one of them, and a liar by omission if nothing else. He’d been an open secret, his existence flaunted and yet highly-sanitized for public consumption. If people had known that he wasn’t a direct result of the mighty American gene pool – strengthened by baseball, fortified by apple pie – that he was in fact just Frankenstein’s monster without the neck bolts… well, he sure wouldn’t have sold as many war bonds, that’s for sure.

“You’re doing it again,” says Maria.

“Doing what?”

“Feeling guilty about something that isn’t your responsibility and that you have no control over.”

Steve raises his eyebrows, even though he’s certain that she can’t see it. In fact, in the inky darkness, he doubts she can see any more of him than a vague shape. “You think you know me that well?”

“I think we can probably stand to save the pity party until after we recover the drive.”

“You could have gone in without me.”

“You’re the Avenger.” There’s a small suitcase – or a large briefcase – on the ground by her feet, and she nudges it with one booted foot. “I’m here for tech support.”

“So, you waited out of courtesy, then.” He can’t keep the skepticism out of his voice.

“That. And the very real possibility that this entire trailer is booby-trapped.” She takes a step back and indicates the front door of the Aljo. “Have at it, Captain.”

Steve hesitates. “I’m sure Natasha would have mentioned…”

“Yes, because she’s thinking so clearly right now.”

Provoked, Steve steps forward and pulls the door open. It requires breaking the deadbolt and torquing the lever-action handle, but there’s no other option because this isn’t the kind of lock JARVIS can hack, although Maria might well have finessed it if she’d been so inclined. Part of him thinks that he should educate himself of certain aspects of spycraft, and that Agent Hill, as his SHIELD liaison, would make an excellent tutor, but another part of him thinks _c’mon, Rogers, stick with what you’re good at: brute force and breaking things._

When nothing detonates, collapses, or jumps out of the open doorway, Steve steps up into the Aljo. Maria is close behind. The inside of the trailer is even darker than the landscape outside. Maria wordlessly brings out a flashlight.

The trailer is as cramped as Steve had expected, with barely enough width for the two of them to stand side-by-side. It smells musty and closed-up but not unclean, and nothing appears out of place. If this is a cache of the kind Natasha spoke of before, where Barton keeps money and weapons and other necessities hidden away, they won’t be easy to find. But that’s not why Steve’s here.

“Bedroom,” says Maria, aiming the flashlight’s beam towards the folding doors to the aft of the trailer.

Because of the close quarters, she hangs back as Steve opens the door and lifts the mattress off its box frame. The tear is small and the stitches meticulous, and he feels a little guilty about undoing Natasha’s handiwork, but he feels _more_ relieved when the long-sought drive – an innocuous plastic and metal box no bigger than a paperback novel – slips through foam and fabric and falls into his hand.

Maria sits down at the dinette and opens her case. There’s a computer inside and a wide selection of cables and wires. He hands her the drive – she passes him the flashlight – and there’s no bickering now, no attempts at witty repartee, because even if they’ve been relegated to the sidelines of this particular enterprise – seeking out a tidbit of information that _might_ help an enemy who, in turn, _might_ help one of their own – the recovery of the drive somehow makes it all seem more urgent, more _real_.

Drive successfully mated to laptop, Maria begins to type. Steve can’t see the screen from where he stands, on the other side of the dinette table, but judging by her furrowed brow and thinning lips he guesses that pulling up the needed information is proving to be a little more difficult than ‘logging onto’ Facebook.

Minutes pass, punctuated by only the slight rattle and click of the keyboard, and Steve is wondering if he dares to disrupt her concentration by speaking, when she saves him the trouble by growling out an oath. “This is going to be more difficult than I thought.” She shakes her head. “If Romanoff had brought this in back when she’d acquired it…”

“So why didn’t she?”

Maria glances up, just for a moment, and then her eyes return to the screen. “If you’d asked me back then I would have assumed she planned on selling the information herself.” Steve says nothing, but Maria continues as though he’s expressed his surprise. “Looking out for number one’s a hard habit to break.”

“Especially when it keeps you alive.”

Maria grunts acknowledgement. Her typing is louder now, and more forceful, as though she isn’t trying to finesse information from the machine as much as beat it into submission. “In retrospect, I’d say that she was trying to keep it out of the wrong hands. And in her mind, that included SHIELD.” She glances up again. “You have to understand, Captain… this drive _is_ the Red Room, or at least all of it that survived.”

“After the fall of the USSR, you mean,” ventures Steve. He sets the flashlight down on the dinette table, the beam aimed across Maria’s hands.

“Even after the Soviet Union broke up, even after the KGB was nominally disbanded, the Red Room kept soldiering on in different forms, under different names, different leadership. I guess you could say it was like Hydra in that respect. It just didn’t know when to die. Then everything just went off the rails. There was chatter that one of their operatives had vanished in the field. And then…”

“Natasha?”

Maria nods. Her fingers slow, her expression settling into a moue of dissatisfaction. “SHIELD didn’t know what had happened, not for a while, just that suddenly this program that officially didn’t exist was in an uproar. According to our assets in-country, they closed up shop almost overnight. Burned a lot of their own operatives and abandoned others. Generals that had survived the rise and fall of the Soviet Union up and decided that they were overdue for retirement.”

“They were afraid.”

“That’s my guess.”

“Of her?”

“Can you blame them? But it wasn’t just Romanoff, I think. It was the idea that one of their pet projects was out of their control, and the possibility that she was just the first of many. That these girls they’d systematically brainwashed might turn out to have minds of their own after all. That what they’d done might be exposed.”

Steve leans against the wall. Would it have ended up that way with him, if things had happened differently? Would people have started looking at him with fear instead of awe, picturing the problems he could create if he decided to stop following orders?

Maria sits back with a sigh. “I can’t crack this. I figured, it being a four-year old encryption…”

A dry crackle; a crisp snap. Steve straightens and Maria looks up sharply, then follows his gaze to the trailer’s door.

A figure appears on the steps; his hands are empty but Steve steps in front of Maria anyway, just an instinct, really. He doesn’t see her rise from the dinette but he _feels_ it, and he knows she’s reaching down for her service weapon even before he hears the soft creak of the holster.


	11. Part Eleven

** PART ELEVEN **

_Footfalls echo in the memory_  
Down the passage which we did not take  
Towards the door we never opened  
Into the rose-garden.  
My words echo  
Thus, in your mind.

_\- T.S. Eliot_

 

(After)

_I am eight years old and the judge looks confused. “Is this really what you want?” she asks._

_“Of course.”_

_But she just looks more troubled, like she thinks I’m only saying this under duress, even though it’s only the two of us in her chambers. “It’s very unusual…” she begins._

_“So am I.”_

_She tries again. “There are people out there… families. You could have a normal life.”_

_I know, logically, that she means no insult by this. To people like her, normal is good, normal is what everybody wants. But the entire time I lived in England – my entire life with my birth parents – normal is exactly what I tried and failed to be._

 

(Before: 2007)

_That night on the plane, with Macau behind them and a long, awkward flight ahead, Clint pulls up all the information SHIELD has on Christopher Artemiev, the man in the Casino Lisboa whose presence had nearly blown the entire mission._

_Most of what they know comes directly from Romanoff – who is sitting at the other end of the cabin, reading something on a tablet and studiously ignoring his existence – during her initial debrief earlier this year. But even before her defection SHIELD had identified Artemiev as a smuggler and a human trafficker; he’s been on the scene for more than a decade, implicated in a dozen jurisdictions but always managing to avoid official charges. He’s connected and he’s clever and just generally an evil son of a bitch._

_Through Romanoff they’d learned that Artemiev had done a lot of business with the Red Room, spiriting girls away from places where children will not be missed. Some of his victims, girls Natasha had grown up with in the program, claimed that he had taken liberties with them between pick-up and delivery, everything from simple physical abuse to out-and-out sexual assault._

_Morse walks up the aisle, perching on the edge of Clint’s seat and reading over his shoulder. “Real piece of work, isn’t he?” she asks quietly, with a guilty glance at Romanoff. “After we found out he’d been working for the Russians, Fury had me analyzing Artemiev’s past travel patterns, correlating the dates and locations with the identities of known Red Room operatives, trying to get a handle on who they trained and why. We didn’t even suspect he’d be here, though. I hate to think what business he might have with AIM.”_

_“So why haven’t we picked him up yet? Why didn’t we grab him tonight?”_

_Morse crosses her legs, balancing on the armrest. “He’d recognized Romanoff. He was on to us.”_

_“We don’t know that for sure. Even if he had, so what?” When Morse doesn’t reply, Clint persists. “Let me guess. SHIELD thinks he’s more useful as a free man.”_

_She hesitates. “I might have overheard Fury telling Park that the decision came down from the Council. The justification is that if the Red Room starts up again, they’ll go to Artemiev, and we’ll be able to use him to track the bastards back to their source.”_

_There are a few pictures in the file, pictures of girls weeks or months before they went missing. “You just told me we can’t track his movements worth a damn.”_

_Clint says it more loudly than he’d intended, and he looks up to meet Romanoff’s eyes. He’s suddenly very aware that Bobbi Morse is all but sitting in his lap._

_He pushes up out of his seat so abruptly that she’s forced to either stand or be knocked off her perch. But she grabs him by the arm as he edges past. “Obviously they’re not telling us everything, Barton. I’m not that naive.”_

_He gently shrugs her off and continues to the forward part of the cabin, under the pretext of either using the bathroom or grabbing a parachute and jumping out the nearest hatch; he passes by Romanoff’s seat before he can make up his mind. She catches him, not by the arm but by the eyes, with a gaze perhaps a fraction of a degree warmer than before. “I would have done it.”_

_He waits._

_“I would have killed him, if I’d been by myself.”_

_He’s surprised less by her inclination towards murder than by her restraint. “Why’d you let that stop you?”_

_“They would have expected you to stop me.”_

_Clint almost laughs, leaning forward with one arm braced against the overhead storage bin. “Why, Agent Romanoff, I didn’t know you cared.”_

_Her eyes rake over his torso, lingering so obviously at the place where his t-shirt has ridden up that he knows he was meant to notice. Is she embarrassed and attempting to distract him, or trying to make him feel foolish? She succeeds on both counts, whatever her intention, and he lowers his arm. “For what it’s worth, SHIELD wouldn’t have authorized a hit. If anything they would have wanted us to take Artemiev into custody.”_

_“I know,” she replies with a hint of exasperation. “That’s why I didn’t kill him. Yet.”_

_Clint considers this, swaying as the plane hits a patch of turbulence. He’s known from the start that Romanoff was never going to be a dutiful little agent, but the idea of his new partner going on a private, off-the-books, unsanctioned, vengeance-motivated hit is electrifying on a couple of different levels. “We might not get another chance,” he points out._

_She picks up her tablet again. “We?” she echoes, sounding bored._

_“I don’t like people who mess with kids.” She doesn’t respond. “Did he hurt you?”_

_She glances up, startled – or maybe just acting startled, or maybe genuinely surprised but trying to make him think it’s an act… it’s all layers with Romanoff, and he still can’t really read her. “No,” she says shortly. “I was… locally sourced. Artemiev handled the international scene. But…”_

_“But?” Clint prompts, because he knows he’s supposed to._

_“But…” She shrugs. “What are children in America afraid of? Monsters in the closet? Creatures under the bed? He was one of my first monsters.” And she goes back to her tablet. The conversation is over._

 

(Before: 2012)

_Julie doesn’t wake until they’re on the plane. She’s never flown before but she knows where they are even with her eyes still closed; the fluttery feeling in her stomach and the faint whine of the engines and the cool, stale, piped-in air can’t mean anything else. Besides, she remembers bits and pieces of the airport: the voice of the security agent, the smell of fried food, the knap of a suit against her cheek…_

_She opens her eyes and the freak is looking at her, smiling in that creepy way; she thinks about screaming but he’d probably just act like some long-suffering dad with a naughty kid and then he’d bring out that little aerosol spray and knock her out again and no one would notice because nobody cares._

_When the stewardess comes by, Julie doesn’t scream. She says, very calmly, “I’m being kidnapped.”_

_The woman looks surprised, but the freak just laughs and says in a fake-British accent, “Yes, sweetie, I’m kidnapping you all the way to Disneyland. It’s quite a trial for us both.” Now the stewardess just looks bored and a little annoyed; she tosses Julie a bag of peanuts and a napkin keeps moving. The freak looks away, out the window, as though embarrassed on her behalf._

_Julie wants to kill him, but she can’t figure out how to do it with a foil packet of peanuts – unless he’s violently allergic, and she doesn’t think she’s that lucky – so she folds the napkin in her lap. It’s not as good as paper, of course, but as always the action calms her._

_Sometimes her mind moves too fast, thoughts coming and going so quickly she can’t even remember thinking them, and she’s seven and a half but sometimes it seems like her brain must be twice as old at least. It remembers things and it sees things, even when she doesn’t want it to, even when she’s asleep – patterns and numbers and words hanging in the air like streamers made of light – and it means she knows a lot, has learned a lot, and is smarter than most people suspect._

_And it’s gotten her in trouble because she’s been able to read since before her first day of nursery school and numbers are so easy that they’re boring and so she’s always found other ways of entertaining herself during lessons. Tagging along after the older kids, the big kids, the bad kids. They think she’s cute, their little pigtailed mascot._

_Mum and Dad were worried, or would have been worried if they hadn’t always been so busy; Mum blamed the teachers and Dad blamed the boys and they decided on a Catholic school, nothing but girls and nuns as far as the eye could see, and the learning and teaching so slow and ponderous that it almost drove Julie insane._

_She folds. Her busy mind narrows to the crease, the angle, the layers; no room remains for thoughts of parents and smoke and burning roses. Something simple, she decides. Can’t do much with a stupid paper napkin. Across the diagonal. Corners to the center once, twice. Flip and do it again. Tuck the edges in. Pull the flap back… careful, careful, or it’ll rip. Inside out makes the petal. And another, and another._

_The freak is watching her now but she doesn’t care. A brown paper blossom blooms beneath her hands. Not a rose, because roses remind her of home._

_He reaches for it and she lets him; he holds the lotus in one pale, long-fingered hand._

_“I’m going to kill you,” she tells him. Not angrily. Anger makes her mind work harder, faster, and right now she needs more than anything to be calm._

_She expects the freak to crumple up the paper lotus, or laugh at her again, or even take out the aerosol. Instead he sets the flower carefully on his fold-down try and continues to admire it. “Do you know how often I’ve heard those words?”_

_“You’ve never heard them from me.” And she grabs the lotus, balls it up in her fist, imagining that it’s his heart, swearing that one day it will be._

 

(39)

Their first stop is a twenty-four hour discount store, where a single man and a girl in rumpled pajamas are hardly noteworthy, even at two in the morning. Clothes for her – a cell phone for him – food for both. He knows that there are cameras on them the entire time; there’s an unmistakable itch between his shoulder blades, the same feeling he gets on a mission when he’s in enemy territory and there’s no one to watch his back.

*

There are places that would accept cash and ask no questions, places they could hole up and wait out the night, but none of them are places that are appropriate to take a little kid in the small, dark hours before dawn.

So he can’t fall off the grid entirely, but there are precautions he can take. The Visa card Clint hands to the motel manager identifies him as Henry Hearst of Reno, a claim backed up by his Nevada driver’s license. It’s a shallow identity – the license would never pass muster with an officer of the law – but the Visa is real enough and Hearst has good credit, so the transaction goes through without incident.

The ground-floor room is barely big enough for its two full-sized beds, the desert-motif wallpaper is peeling and the television remote doesn’t work, but the window isn’t painted shut – ensuring a secondary escape route – and it’s clean enough to ensure that the roaches will at least be polite.

Julie cleans up and changes into her new clothes, Clint makes peanut butter sandwiches and gets sodas from the hallway vending machine, and for a few moments the tableau is quiet and calm and deceptively normal. Clint’s spent plenty of nights in rooms like this, eating cheap food and planning out his next move, and it’s not until he glances at the small figure on the other bed – eating so silently, so seriously, each bite methodical, not a crumb on either her striped shirt or the grubby bedspread, and yet studiously avoiding the crust just like Barney always had – that the surrealism of it all really hits him: he’s on the run with a kid so young she probably hasn’t lost all her baby teeth, and he’s not exactly sure who he’s on the run from, if he’s her savior or just another variety of kidnapper, if keeping her is prudent or the worst decision he’s ever made, and he sure as hell doesn’t know what his next move should be.

The cell phone – a clunky prepaid model in basic black – is charging by the bathroom sink, but who can he call? Steve? Not if he’s still with Stark, who’d track the signal in a hot second, and Clint isn’t yet sure that he wants to be found. Fury? No, he can’t be sure any knowledge he shared wouldn’t make it back to Lycaon and, by extension, Fisher.

Natasha?

Manesh’s annoyed assurances ring in his mind, blaring and insistent – _she isn’t in danger. There’s no impostor –_ and he can’t help but recall Fisher’s bewildered look when he admitted he’d come looking for his partner. _“Here?”_ she’d asked, perplexed. And Banner, Banner had stood right there in that motel room and looked at _that woman_ and he had been so sure that it had been her, that it had been Natasha, but Clint had been equally positive that _he knew better_.

Now… he isn’t sure. The panic has ebbed away, along with the rabid certainty that he _has to move, can’t stop moving, has to find her_ ; in fact, in retrospect, the compulsion is a little embarrassing. But the echo of what he felt is still there, the after-effects of _cognitive dissonance_ warbling along the chords of his mind, leaving him shaky and unsure.

He glances at Julie and finds her watching him with a cool and slightly critical eye, as though she knows exactly how conflicted and out of his depth he feels. Mostly to forestall the sarcastic comment he _knows_ is coming, he says, “You probably want to call home right now, talk to your parents, but we don’t know who might be listening in. For now it’s best if we—”

“My parents are probably dead.”

She says it flatly, not with the oft-repeated weariness of an experienced orphan but with anger, with pain and hurt and fear but without tears. She says it, in short, not like a child at all, and he replies, “I think you need to tell me everything. From the beginning.”

So she does, in detail, without emotion or conjecture, as thorough and objective as a good agent. Clint knows that she was never taught, never trained, that this is simply how Julie Banks sees the world. She tells him about leaving school and about Sister Elizabeth’s timely arrival, and about the way the smoke rose over the rooftops and how the sirens screamed. About the man waiting in Elizabeth’s house, the pale man with the scarred face, and how he called the false nun _Charlotte_ before shooting her in the chest and smuggling Julie out of the country. About waking up on the plane to the States with that freak – Christopher Artemiev – and about his conversation with Sloane Fisher, and the words are caustic in Julie’s mouth, far too harsh in the voice of a small girl: _They grow up fast, or they don’t grow up at all._

Clint knows that children are prone to invention when giving testimony, predisposed to say what they think their audience wants to hear, but he doesn’t doubt her for a moment. He’s realized by now that her memory is excellent, that she’s incredibly – maybe even unusually – intelligent, and he assumes that she knows that as well. So he’s surprised when she breaks off from her description of Ansel DeGrasse to demand furiously, resentfully, “Why me? Why do all of this to _me_?”

 _Because they thought you were good clay_ , Clint thinks, putting the pieces together. _They thought they could mold you into exactly what they wanted_. _And who’s to say they weren’t right?_

Christopher Artemiev has been trafficking in children for more than twenty years, and his most infamous client in the eighties and nineties had been the Red Room. The Russians had been picky. After all, not every little girl is predisposed to discipline and violence; not every child can be broken down and rebuilt without causing serious and irreparable damage.

Artemiev had been a master of his trade, according to Natasha and others in the know, able to identify superior candidates, girls who would be most likely to survive the training, the _transformation_. Except that maybe his reputation was only partly deserved; maybe he’d never been anything more than the middleman during these horrific transactions, managing buyers and accomplices, such as this Elizabeth-Charlotte woman, who’d done the identifying for him.

“They wanted to turn you into a weapon,” Clint says. “They wanted to raise you to be a spy.”

Julie frowns. “I’m _seven-and-a-half_.”

“Lycaon’s playing a long game,” says Clint, although he quickly criticizes himself for making such an assumption. After all, Fisher’s procedures had been devastatingly effective and startlingly fast; had DeGrasse’s boss expected that Julie would be ready as an operative in five years? In three? A ten year old girl could never infiltrate a military base or a high-society function, but she could go other places and pass almost unremarked: streets and slums, schools and shops, a thousand other locales where children are expected or at least overlooked. She might have been tasked with uncovering information and identifying targets, or merely acting as bait or providing distractions, a tool in the hands of more lethal men and women.

And five or six years down the road, just able to pass for an adult, she might have been only the first in a new batch of Widows, loosed on a world that rarely saw beneath the surface of a beautiful woman.

Julie sits back against the pillows, pulling her knees to her chest and looking so dispiritedly at her discarded sandwich crust that Clint is moved to resort to stupid, empty optimism. “Maybe Elizabeth was right. Maybe your parents weren’t home. Maybe they got out when the fire started.”

“She lied about everything else,” says Julie darkly. “Why tell the truth about that? Besides, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Getting rid of the only people who would notice I was gone, or come looking for me, or care what happens to me.”

Clint doesn’t try to argue with this. People disappear all the time, without a word or a trace. After all, when he and Barney had run off to Carson’s, who from the orphanage had come looking for them? Who had given a damn?

In the aftermath of the fire, how long would it take the London authorities to discover who the victims were, and that had a daughter? Or did Lycaon and Artemiev and Fisher’s web reach deeper than that? Maybe a small body had been placed in the house before the first match was struck, reduced by ferocious heat to ashes and a couple child-sized bones, like those he had discovered in Culiacán.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” says Clint abruptly, and Julie looks up in surprise. “I mean it,” he says, holding out his bandaged arm. “You took care of me; I’m going to take care of you.”

It’s more stupid, empty optimism, born of the memory of those small, charred bodies and the haunted desolation in the girl’s ash-gray eyes. Maybe he’s said it just to give her hope – whether or not that hope is well-placed, whether or not he deserves her trust – but he means it, and it changes everything. By taking responsibility for Julie he’s given up his right to be selfish and his freedom to muddle through on his own.

He doesn’t know how he could have come to this decision so quickly, how he’s able to put Natasha _second_ after spending this last nightmarish day in a fevered compulsion to save her. Maybe Fisher is right; maybe he really does have a hero complex. Maybe as long as there’s _someone_ who needs his help, some deep-seated impulse of his psyche is satisfied.

“Get some sleep,” he tells Julie, more brusquely than she deserves. “I’ll call in the cavalry in the morning.”

Maybe in the morning, somehow, things will make sense.

*

Clint lies awake for some time, staring up at the ceiling with one hand on the upper limb of his bow, the quiver a comforting weight against his hip, the fletched ends of the arrows within his grasp, listening. To Julie’s soft, steady breathing from the other bed. To the sounds of traffic beyond the window. Tensing every time footfalls sound beyond the door. A corpse with an arrow in his throat would be tantamount to announcing his presence in Vegas to anyone with a police scanner, but he can’t imagine running a protection detail – which is what this has become – with anything else.

When Stark and the others come, they’ll draw attention; they simply can’t do otherwise, and the amount of attention drawn will be directly proportional to the degree of safety they’ll provide… unless DeGrasse’s employer has more resources than Clint suspects. Unless the others believe that he’s insane, that Julie is _his_ victim…

There’s only one person he knows whose strength matches her discretion, who would trust him regardless of what anyone else said.

And this morning she pointed a gun at his face.

He sighs and rolls onto his side, towards his weapons and away from the other bed, alternately trying to block out his recollections of the morning and struggling to bring the memory of Natasha’s – _Natasha’s_? – face into sharper focus. But it remains blurred, like a figure seen through sweat-streaked glass, and the harder he tries the further it recedes.

Footsteps, movement – his fingers curl around an arrow’s shaft until he realizes that the sound is coming from behind him. Julie. Before he can roll over, before he can ask what’s wrong, the mattress dips, a spring twangs. She’s beside him without a word, without a touch, and when he glances over his shoulder he sees she’s curled up on her side, facing away, as she had been on the other bed, but now just within his reach. Her breathing softens. Slows.

After a few moments, so does his.

*

Clint wakes with a start. He lies very still for a moment. Everything is quiet. Julie hasn’t moved from his side.

He doesn’t remember dreaming, but somehow he knows he must have, and that in his dream he had seen through the glass.

Carefully, he stands from the bed. Quietly he walks to the bathroom and picks up the phone.

 

(40)

The pre-dawn desert races by, dark and bristling and unimportant. All that matters is the unspooling asphalt and the voices in his ear.

He is no longer a prisoner, but at times he still feels like a captive. He is trapped in ignominy, inside a cage of subterfuge.

It has been almost a decade since he walked through the gates of C-Max, eight years since the psychiatrist at the minimum-security prison – who had admitted him under the name John Sleutels – declared that his patient was cured.

The man called John has contacts throughout the world now, in a dozen governments and as many unaffiliated groups. To the _Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur_ and MI6 and Mossad he is only a well-placed source in the intelligence community, a fellow spy. But to the Egyptian Mukhabarat he is a high-ranking Syrian official, and to China’s State Secrecy Bureau he is a disgruntled member of the Hong Kong Independence Movement, and the National Socialists in the United States believe him to be a state senator with deeply-hidden neo-Nazi sympathies. All lies, and he has not met with a single one of them face-to-face, but in this age faces have been deemed unimportant. All that matters is information.

The man called John has spent his time wisely, quiet but industrious, putting together a nest of informants and supporters the likes of which Nick Fury never could have imagined, much less appreciated. This pit of poisonous allies, culled from the great and loathsome alike, all believe he is theirs when in fact they belong to him. He tells them next to nothing, just enough to make them think that their goals are his goals, because that is what they want to believe.

The next step is the girl. There will be others like her, eventually, but she is the first. She must be the best of them all, a model to build upon, to copy in the years to come. That was why Artemiev was so important. He has a knack for finding the strong ones. He has a gift.

But now the Avengers are involved, and through them, SHIELD. They are the only ones who’ve ever gotten close to Artemiev. That was years ago, but if the Mad Russian believes he’s in their sights again he’ll vanish for another five years. The girl may be their last chance.

So: find her. Kill Barton if he gets in the way. Eliminate any others who insist on interfering. John can’t go toe-to-toe with the likes of a Norse demigod, and even Stark is beyond his ability to manage alone, but he isn’t alone. They won’t attack if he has the girl, and that should give him time to retreat, to find safety among his allies.

There are still a few in SHIELD who understood his greatness. His vision. He can call on them again, if necessary.

For now, his own resources will suffice.

 

(41)

Maria feels a frisson of annoyance when Steve steps between her and the shadow in the doorway. This isn’t her first rodeo. She reaches for her service weapon, but before she can soldier her way forward he glances over his shoulder and murmurs, “Secure the drive.”

Of course, she thinks, pulling cables free with her other hand; he’s just worried about the _drive_.

This should lessen her annoyance. It doesn’t. But her irritation is nevertheless forgotten when the figure steps up out of the darkness, into the cramped and musty trailer, and says, “That really isn’t necessary.”

The man is smartly dressed in a dark, pressed suit, arms raised, hands empty, and face wan in the flashlight’s backwash. “My name is Agent Park, Captain,” he says calmly. “I’m unarmed, and alone.”

Steve glances back briefly… and Maria doesn’t like the incredulous half-smile hovering on his lips. She shoves the drive into the soft-sided briefcase that had contained her laptop and hisses, “He didn’t come with _me_.”

“That’s true,” says Park amicably.

Steve draws himself up, seeming to fill the trailer wall to wall and ceiling to floor. “Then why are you here?”

“I’m the head of… excuse me, Captain, but can I perhaps put my arms down? Thank you. As I was saying, I’m the head of SHIELD’s internal affairs division. I’ve spent the last few months investigating the incident in New York, as well as certain oversights and abuses of power that may have exacerbated the–”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with that,” says Steve. “And you’re not answering my question.”

Park smiles thinly. “My apologies. What I was _about_ to say was that while New York is my primary focus, I still carry a torch for what my colleagues consider a cold case: the matter of the Red Room files from Volgograd. Which, if I had to guess, I’d say are in the bag Agent Hill is holding right now.”

 _Lie_ , thinks Maria, desperately trying to beam the word into Steve’s brain. _Lie to him, dammit._

“If you’re not _working_ with Agent Hill,” says Steve coolly, “I don’t see how you could possibly know that’s what we came for.”

Maria sighs quietly. “He’s probably been standing outside and listening for the last five minutes.”

Park shrugs. “I never was any great shakes at spycraft, you know, but sometimes the oldest tricks are the best. I’ll admit, I was surprised.” He looks at Maria for the first time. “I actually thought you might be engaging in some kind of back-woodsy, clandestine meeting with Director Fury.”

“If I want to talk to the director,” Maria retorts, “I can pick up the phone in my office, same as you. Or is it now illegal for me to communicate with my superior?”

“Not at all. But, well, the walls do have ears.”

Steve steps towards Park. “So you admit it. You want this drive.” His tone is light, but Maria can hear the darker undercurrent; he’s about two paces away from picking Park up by the front of his shirt and calling him _Lycaon._

“Of course I do,” says Park. He sounds nervous, and rightly so, but he stands his ground. “I’ve been trying to destroy those files since I found out they still existed.”

Maria frowns. “Destroy them?”

“Why would you want to do that?” asks Steve.

A sudden, angry flush chases some of the pallor from Park’s cheeks. “Why _wouldn’t_ I? In the right hands – sorry, the _wrong_ hands – those files are a veritable cookbook for the most perverse and perverted espionage program I’ve ever encountered. Behavioral conditioning, systematic torture, physical and even genetic manipulation of _children_ … Do you know how many nights I’ve spent, lying awake, wondering who Romanoff passed that information to after Volgograd? We knew it wasn’t Barton – we’d been watching _him_ – and there were reports of another operative on the ground in Russia but we didn’t know what to believe. For months we monitored her communications and waited for a sign, for people like Christopher Artemiev to come out of the woodwork, for the disappearances to start again, and eventually the murders… And all this time, it was in _Ohio_.” He chuckles, but it’s a dry, humorless sound.

Steve turns to Maria again, suspicion and bewilderment written clear across his features. In answer, she holsters her weapon. “You said _destroy_ ,” she reminds Park, stepping forward. “Not _acquire_ … not _secure_. Destroy. But those weren’t your orders, were they?” She knows SHIELD better than that.

“Did you ever wonder _why_ I gave up my position, Maria?” he retorts, smiling ruefully. “The one you have now, I mean. Why I became a desk jockey for IA when I might have stayed on track to become the next director of SHIELD? There’s always been a faction on the Council that is… very comfortable with collateral damage. They’re so concerned with _can we_ that they don’t bother to wonder _should we_ , and that is always a dangerous and destructive mindset. Fifteen years ago, SHIELD didn’t have a tenth of the power it does now – it wasn’t even properly _SHIELD_ then, just a patchwork quilt of spies with ambition and the politicians who loved them – but the Council was even _more_ paranoid, if you can imagine that. They were men obsessed with thinking up threats that no one could even imagine, much less plan for. Of course, to a degree, they were all right. Does the name Janos Roeske mean anything to you?”

Steve mutely shakes his head. Maria is still and silent. She has heard the name before – spoken in whispers, in murmurs – but nothing more.

“He was still a young man when he was appointed to the Council, but an impressive one. Brilliant, well-read, well-spoken… and well-connected, of course, which was more important than anything. His tale was suitably tragic – orphaned as a boy, adopted… but I won’t bore you with his life’s story. The important thing to understand is that he was charismatic, influential, and very successful in convincing this nascent version of SHIELD that more extreme measures were warranted to ensure… I think he referred to it as _global tranquility_. He didn’t last long on the Council, of course – I think the others were frightened of what he might have been able to do, with or without them – but the words of Janos Roeske are still spoken in certain circles, and his influence continues to echo.” He gave Maria a hard look. “He would have approved of Director Fury’s commitment to Phase Two.”

She stiffens. “What about the Avengers Initiative?”

“Based on what I know of the man… I don’t believe so.” Park glances at Steve and smirks. “Not enough control. Roeske very much believed in control. But he wouldn’t have thought twice about exploiting Red Room research towards his own ends. He was no fan of the Russians’ political machinations, but he did admire the aims of their science divisions.”

“Did he send Romanoff to Volgograd in the first place?”

“Oh, no, he was in jail by that point,” replies Park. “His enemies back home were more than happy to bring charges again him at the first opportunity, and the rest of the Council was eager to give him up. But it wasn’t Roeske himself that concerned me… it was how many other agents – good men and women, for the most part – subscribed to his belief that radical threats require a radical response.”

“Was Fury one of those agents?” asks Steve.

“Not at first,” admits Park. “But these last few years, I believe he’s come to see some of Roeske’s ideas as having merit.” He nods at the briefcase in Maria’s hand. “However, I didn’t think he’s yet come to the point…”

“This isn’t about Fury,” says Maria.

Park purses his lips. “If you’d care to tell me what it _is_ about, perhaps I could be of some help. I’ve always had a bit of a talent for decryption. Under one condition, of course.”

Steve crosses his arms. “And what’s that?”

“That once you discover what it is you’ve come here to learn, you destroy that drive,” says Park flatly. “Completely. Irrevocably. Irretrievably.”

Steve glances briefly at Maria, and she can read the uncertainty in his eyes. Surely this isn’t a request that Lycaon – or any of his allies – would make, unless it’s a trick, a trap more deeply-laid than she can perceive. “I… can’t promise that,” says Steve carefully. “Natasha brought this information back, kept it intact for all these years a reason. I won’t destroy it without talking to her first.”

“Fair enough,” says Park grudgingly. “Anyway, I suppose if you’d agreed without any reservations I wouldn’t have believed you.”

So, only a few minutes after nearly pulling a gun on the head of Internal Affairs, Maria finds herself reconnecting the drive to the computer and moving aside so that Park can sit down at the shabby dinette. “My Russian is a bit rusty,” he confesses, by way of accepting Maria’s hovering presence at his back. “What are we looking for?”

Steve, to Maria’s surprise, tells Park only the bare minimum; Park is dully intrigued and as competent at decryption as he claimed. Suddenly Maria is looking at a list of Cyrillic names embellished with dates and cryptic notations. Several of the names appear more than once, differentiated only by a number, and when she realizes the meaning of this she feels faintly nauseous.

There are four _Anyas_.

 

(42)

Most of the drive south is pretty light on conversation. Manesh lapses into a cool, self-satisfied silence, the wordless taunt of a skilled manipulator. Fisher is dead, and Manesh might have only days to live herself, but somehow she’s still in control of the situation.

And Natasha hates it.

She’d called Stark back, told him what Manesh said about the girl, and his response had been as immediate as it had been obvious: “You know she’s probably lying, right?”

“Probably,” said Natasha; she disagreed, actually, but it wasn’t worth getting into an argument over with Manesh sitting just a foot away.

Kamala Manesh isn’t Anya. Natasha has to keep reminding herself of that. And even if she is… what then? They hadn’t been friends, only fellow soldiers, and if she still felt any camaraderie with this woman – which she doesn’t – it would only be because of a shared past, shared pain. Natasha is certain that Manesh knows more than she’s telling, but she’s hoarding that information against the very real possibility that Natasha will decide she’s more trouble than she’s worth.

The phone rings. As before, rather than routing the call through the car speakers via Bluetooth, Natasha picks up the handset. It’s either Stark or Steve; either way, the less Manesh overhears the better. “Romanoff.”

There’s no response. Frowning, steering with one hand, Natasha pulls the phone away long enough to glance at the caller ID display. It’s not a number she knows. She puts the phone back to her ear and listens to the silence for a moment longer, wondering if she’s on the far end of the world’s first-known superhero butt-dial. “Steve, is that you?”

“No,” says the caller. “It’s not Steve.”

Natasha’s breath catches in her throat. She’s too relieved to be surprised, too grateful to remain composed, and a wave of loose-limbed giddiness breaks over her body, filling her with delicious warmth. _Clint._ He’s not only alive, he’s _contacting her_ , and it’s more than she could have hoped. “Are you okay?” she demands; her voice is less steady than she would have liked, and Manesh looks over curiously.

“I’ll live,” says Clint quietly.

 _He’s calling me_ , Natasha realizes, coming down off her momentary high, _but he still doesn’t trust me. Not completely. No quick fix, remember?_ She’s going to have to give before she can expect anything in return. “We found the clinic. You left a mess.” No reply. “And we found Fisher’s body.”

“What?”

“Someone shot her.”

“It wasn’t me. She was alive when I left. Pissed, but alive.”

He sounds strange. Defensive. Anxious. But at least he’s still talking. “Then who?”

“I don’t know,” he replies, frustrated. “One of her stooges, maybe, or DeGrasse, or his bodyguard. Hell, maybe Artemiev came back…”

“Artemiev?” demands Natasha, bewildered. She hasn’t heard that name in years, although his face still visits her nightmares on occasion: the long white hands, the scarred and twisted face. As a child she’d watched him from between the banister rails, and even though she was cloaked by darkness he had looked up as though he sensed her eyes on him, as though he could see her without the need for light. “Did _he_ bring the girl?”

Clint hesitates. When he speaks, his voice is lower; the words more deliberate, more dangerous. “How did you know about her?”

“Is she with you?”

“Natasha,” says Manesh.

“Who’s that?” Nothing wrong with Clint’s ears.

“It’s Manesh,” says Natasha, irritated. “It was your idea for us to work together, remember? Clint, this girl… if you have her, you need to be careful. Whoever Lycaon really is, whatever resources he has, he’s going to come after her.”

Clint’s laugh is short and humorless. “Thanks, I hadn’t figured that out on my own.”

More urgently now: “ _Natasha_.”

She ignores Manesh. “Where are you?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you. Maybe you’ve been working for Fisher all this time,” says Clint, but without enthusiasm or conviction. This isn’t her partner, not yet, but it’s also not the man who was ready to put an arrow through her throat.

“If you really believed that,” Natasha points out, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

In the rearview mirror: headlights.

“It’s a Jeep,” says Manesh ominously.

“We’re… in Vegas,” says Clint slowly, reluctantly.

“Hold on,” Natasha tells them both. She tilts her head to pinion the phone between cheek and shoulder, and then with both hands she cracks the wheel, pulling a hard U in the middle of the freeway; the tires bark and then bite, and with a squeal and a kick they’re headed north once more, towards Vegas… and towards the only other vehicle on this lonely stretch of road.

The Jeep is closer now, rapidly approaching, and Natasha can make out one figure: a light-skinned man.

“ _Natalia, look out_!” says Manesh, and what’s more she says it in _Russian_ , but there’s no time to wonder at that. The Jeep is crossing the median now, rushing toward them at a terrible and increasing speed; it might be a drunk or careless driver but it’s not; it’s targeted death on six cylinders.

The highway is only a two-lane road with narrow paved shoulders and no guardrail, just sand and scrub hemming them in on either side, and the Chevy was chosen for anonymity, not performance. But Natasha’s driven almost everything on four wheels or two, and she’s played chicken with worse than this, so she ignores Manesh’s soft but continuous stream of curses, even ignores Clint’s worried voice in her ear. She presses down on the accelerator… waits… waits… _now_.

Metal kisses metal and the Chevy jerks. Natasha’s teeth clamp down on her tongue and her mouth fills with the taste of blood, and the phone flies away with a clatter, but she swerved in time, they’re still moving, still headed north, and the Jeep is turning to follow them, kicking up dust and dirt from beneath its heavy tires as it drives off the pavement and dangerously close to a roadside swale. Natasha watches in the rearview mirror, hoping that the Jeep’s higher profile will tip it onto its side, but the gods of physics are not with them tonight.

The rearview mirror flares with light. The pursuit is on.

It doesn’t last long. The road is flat and straight and the nearest city is almost twenty miles away. Now would be a great time for Stark to show up… so, naturally, he doesn’t. And in less than a minute the Jeep is there, behind them, next to them; the driver is a blond man, young and unfamiliar to Natasha, but Manesh curses again and says “Jason” with undisguised loathing as she powers down the window, filling the car with cool, dry air and the roar of competing engines. “One of ours.”

The Jeep hits the rear corner panel on the passenger’s side. Manesh twists in her seat – her weapon appears in her hands – her aim is steady despite the way the car is shaking around them – and Natasha slows just enough for the Jeep to draw up alongside. The man stares at them in a moment of frozen anger and surprise. The shot is perfect.

Manesh doesn’t take it.

Natasha curses and accelerates before Jason can make solid contact. Manesh turns back around, dropping the gun into her lap as though its touch is painful. “I couldn’t… I couldn’t,” she says, shouting over the cacophony of motor and axel and wheel, maybe even sobbing, and Natasha realizes that this was not a moment of sentimentality or squeamishness: Manesh has been mentally, physically prohibited from firing at another Institute product.

Not the best time to discover that, really.

The Jeep strikes again and the Chevy fishtails, the steering wheel pulling beneath Natasha’s hands, the brakes useless. They spin almost one hundred and eighty degrees before the rear wheels bounce off the asphalt shoulder, into the sand, and momentum carries them backwards into the swale, so that they are pointed skyward like astronauts prepping for takeoff.

Natasha is thrust forward; despite the seat belt, her forehead raps against the steering wheel hard enough to blur her vision.

She shakes her head, spits blood; her fingers are reaching for the belt release when the demonic headlights flare again and, with a sound like the sky breaking the Jeep smashes into the front driver’s side bumper. The violent contact comes too quickly, the driver’s side window comes too fast, and—


	12. Part Twelve

** PART TWELVE **

_The endless cycle of idea and action,_   
_Endless invention, endless experiment,_   
_Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;_   
_Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;_   
_Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word._

_\- T.S. Eliot_

 

(Before)

_How many times in your life can you be orphaned?_

_They say that you can’t choose your family, but that isn’t true. You lose your parents to a dark road and too much whisky, so you choose again. Your mentor betrays you for petty vengeance, so you choose again. Your brother boards a bus and leaves you standing in the middle of the street, bow in hand, and it occurs to you that maybe you’re better off as a solo act anyway._

_But sometimes family chooses you. Sometimes, when you don’t take the hint, it even knocks more than once. It comes dressed in a suit, wearing wingtips and a wry smile and saying the sorts of things that your dad might have said if your dad hadn’t been a raging alcoholic asshole. It comes in a flash of red and black that resolves into the most dangerous, most beautiful, most fascinating woman you’ve ever met._

_You find work. You find purpose. You find friendship. You find love._

_But you always have to keep choosing, because eventually they all leave you._

 

(Before)

_How many times in life can you be lost?_

_You are a child: your mother’s hair is soft and your father’s beard smells pleasantly of pipe smoke. You have a doll and a bed and a place where you belong. And then you have none of those things._

_You are found by others. They are armed with steel and syringes and vicious words. No sculptor ever worked his clay as cruelly as they mold you. You had a doll and now you are one until the night you can’t take it any longer. You were shaped for a purpose. You fulfilled your promise. And now you have neither._

_You find yourself alone. You turn your skills into money, into bread, into a roof, into an identity. Names can be bought and sold, reused and torn away; they taught you this. You eat and sleep and breathe but you do not exist. Are you alive? How would you know? You bleed, but the dead also bleed for a while._

_He finds you before the storm, the scent of honeysuckle in the heavy air. You owe him your life, and before this you have only owed death. What madness leads him to lower his bow? The same madness lowers your own weapon._

_You find yourself. He finds you. But you know it can’t last. Home never does._

 

 (43)

“I _really_ wish you wouldn’t do that,” says Stark. Despite the politeness of the words it’s less a request than a threat… a threat from a man used to getting his way.

Joey has never been threatened by a celebrity before, either implicitly or otherwise, much less a celebrity in a suit of armor equipped to wage war on a small country. It’s unnerving. Joey’s starting to think that his initial instinct about this case was correct: he should have bugged out when he’d had the chance, dropped the whole damn thing into Bernhardt’s lap and gone home to eat cold, congealed macaroni and cheese.

But now the Fed is gone, disinterested in the dead woman or her facility despite his contention that he’d been pursuing her as a wanted fugitive. Maybe her being dead was good enough for government work. Maybe he had bigger fish to fry.

Unfortunately for pretty much everyone else involved, including Joey, the agent had split before Stark had learned about _the kid_.

It was obvious that Stark didn’t trust the source of the intel, but then Thor had gone back into the half-burned building to investigate further. When he’d reemerged, empty-handed but undeniably grim, Stark had tried to delay the inevitable. “Don’t tell me…”

“I found a room,” Thor had intoned, and then he’d told them about it, about rough walls and cold concrete floors, about a child-sized bed with pale blue-flowered sheets, and a small white desk with a neat stack of picture books, all smoke-damaged but unmistakable.

“Well, shit,” was Stark’s assessment.

Silently, Joey agreed. A kid changed everything. The building was about as damaged as it was going to get; the victims, likewise, couldn’t be any deader than they were now. In terms of the clinic and the women, the emergency was over. But now they were talking about child abduction.

Joey had cancelled the fire engine from Needles and had ordered his uniformed officers back to their patrol cars with strict instructions to stay radio silent and off their phones, all in the hopes of avoiding the inevitable media circus, but to do more would be to court professional disaster. “I’m not saying I want to go out and get a warrant for your friend,” he tells Stark now. “But if there’s a missing kid involved, at the very least I’ve got to put out a BOLO for both of them, or I might as well just hand in my badge right now. And I know you might not care about my job, but I have a wife at home who’s already pretty pissed at me, and if I go home and tell her I got fired because I was running interference for superheroes, she will _kick my ass_.”

Thor looks vaguely bored by this little tirade, but Stark flinches. Or does he? The look is gone so fast; it’s hard to be sure. “I have to follow protocol here,” Joey continues, “especially with the FBI involved…”

“If he really was FBI,” interjects Stark.

“Huh?”

Stark looks back towards the chopper’s erstwhile landing site, now only dimly illuminated by the patrol cars’ headlights. “There was something familiar…” he begins, almost speaking to himself, and then he turns back on Joey with a fierce scowl. “You could actually be putting them in worse danger, you know.”

“I don’t want to put anyone in danger! But I have to do my job.”

Thor steps up beside Stark. “I could render him unconscious, if it would help,” he suggests.

Joey edges away as Stark appears to consider this, but only for a moment. “No,” he says grudgingly, “although if I could take a rain-check on that offer…”

Thor doesn’t respond. Instead, he turns his head away, looking towards the north with a vaguely puzzled expression. Joey doesn’t see anything; the night is dark outside this small circle of headlights and flashlights, and the only way to tell where the sky ends and the land begins is to look for where the stars disappear.

“What’s wrong?” asks Stark.

Thor doesn’t reply. He walks a few paces away, towards the source of his unseen fascination. Joey reflects that he actually looks more intimidating without the cape, which is still being used as the dead woman’s funeral shroud. It’s like he’s saying _shit’s about to get real; dress-up time is over_. After a long moment he glances over his armored shoulder. “Did you hear that?”

Now they all stand in silence, straining for a sound. A mild autumn breeze stirs the sand at their feet, and the clinic door creaks softly on its hinges. An owl hoots.

“Say that I didn’t,” says Stark. “What is it?”

Thor listens for a minute longer, still facing north, head tilted to the side like Amber’s corgi when it hears her car in the driveway. Then he blinks in surprise, drawing in a breath.

Stark reacts as well. “JARVIS picked up _that_ ,” he says, looking grim.

“What?” asks Joey, bewildered.

In an instant, in the whir and snap of a closing faceplate, the rich celebrity in the metal suit becomes Iron Man one more: iconic, implacable, unstoppable. “Gunshots.”

 

(44)

Kamala wakes to a harsh metallic _twang_ as the passenger’s side door is pulled out of a warped frame, a jostle as her seat belt is unbuckled, and a curious sensation of weightlessness as she’s lifted bodily out of the car. Before she can do more than raise her head and reach vainly for her weapon – not there, damn it, knocked out of her hand in the crash – Jason slams her back into the side of the Chevy with one beefy hand around her neck. “Where the hell have you been?” he snarls. “Why weren’t you answering your phone?”

Still disoriented, Kamala digs her fingers into a certain spot on Jason’s wrist, pinching a particularly sensitive nerve. He curses in pain and releases her throat but doesn’t back away. “Asshole,” she spits. “What were you trying to do, kill me?”

“No,” says Jason, sounding surprised and a little hurt as well as angry. He tilts his head and peers through the window at Romanoff. From this angle there’s not much to see: red hair gleaming in the Jeep’s blazing headlights, a smudged starburst of blood on the glass. If the Chevy had side airbags, they hadn’t deployed. “Who’s that?”

“She’s an associate,” Kamala says evasively. “She’s going to help… us.” _Us_ sounds better than _me_ , she decides, pushing sweat-dampened hair out of her eyes.

“Help?” Jason echoes, perplexed. “Help do us what? You were supposed to bring in Barton, remember? Instead, he shows up on his own, blows the place up, kills Sophia and takes off with the brat!”

“I know.”

“How the hell do you know anything?” demands Jason. He moves in even closer, pinning her to the car with his body, although he doesn’t try to put his hands on her again. “You’ve been gone for two days.”

She breathes in the scent of hot metal and spilled fuel, fighting for calm. “It’s a miracle of modern technology called a telephone, genius. Did you know that Fisher’s dead?”

He stiffens, staring at her as if she’s gone mad. “No she’s not. She sent me to come get you.” Kamala doesn’t argue, and her silence unnerves him. His voice goes up an octave, becoming a pleading whine. “She’s fine. Why would you even say that? _Who told you that?_ ”

“I have my sources.”Kamala shifts her weight, telegraphing that she’s about to knee him in the groin. He steps back instinctively, just far enough to get his hands between them, but she’s faster and shoves him square in the chest. He stumbles a little on the uneven ground. “Obviously it happened after you left to find _me_.”

Jason’s stunned expression darkens, roiling with sudden and intense hatred. “Barton…”

She snorts. “He was long gone. It was someone else. DeGrasse or his bodyguard or maybe even that idiot Damian… he wasn’t even fully processed, Fisher was stupid to even let him—”

Jason makes a choking sound. “Don’t… don’t say that about her.”

Kamala pushes him again, far enough that she can slide out from between his body and the car, not because she’s afraid of him but because she can’t stand seeing the kicked-puppy-dog look on his face. She remembers the days when she felt that same blind loyalty to Sloane Fisher, that brain-dead devotion.  Back then she hadn’t been the doctor’s puppet, but rather her ally, her comrade in arms. That Kamala Manesh had been a whole person, a woman with a history - a terrible, mangled history, granted, but a history nonetheless – and a purpose in life, and together with Ajax they had made up the powerful inner circle of the Witten Institute, even as they plotted against the titular founder.

Jason was no Ajax, for all that he had taken the other man’s place in Fisher’s bed. He was a petty criminal, not a drug lord’s attack dog. Ajax, while uneducated, had possessed a low, cruel cunning; he’d been a cheerful would-be killer of children, whereas Kamala doesn’t know if Jason has even taken a life.

He’s capable of it now, however; of that she has no doubt. She doesn’t know the specifics of his programming, but she has to assume the worst. “We need help, Jason. Fisher being dead means we could die too. You thought she was helping you after you got out of jail, but she wasn’t. She was… putting a leash on you and strapping a bomb to your chest.” Is he triggered? Coded? “Whatever she told you to do, whatever orders she gave, you’ve got to try to forget about it. Put it out of your mind. She’s dead, but we’re still alive, and if we want to stay that way we’re going to have to be smart. We’re going to have to deal with SHIELD…”

He reacts to the word as though slapped, rearing back and taking another hard look into the Chevy’s interior. “SHIELD…” he mutters. “So that’s Barton’s bitch. Does she know where he is?”

Kamala’s hesitation is brief – just a second of uncertainty, the memory of that phone call – but it’s enough to confirm the paranoid bastard’s suspicions. Jason sets his jaw and turns on his heel, circling the ditch-mired rear of the car, on a beeline to the driver’s side, and Kamala stumbles after him. “We need her, you idiot,” she shouts, but he ignores her, so she kicks him hard in the back of the left knee.

His leg buckles and suddenly he is kneeling in the sand with his back to her, and she prepares to apply the tip of her boot to the back of his skull, but this time he is faster. He swivels, still on one knee, and his Glock is in his hand. Pointed at her chest.

Kamala freezes.

“I was supposed to find you,” says Jason through gritted teeth. The gun looks like a toy in his big hands. “I found you. Now we need to get our hands on Barton and the girl. If this bitch knows where they are, all she’s got to do is tell me.”

“You know she won’t do that.” _If she’s still alive. She’s got to be alive._ SHIELD will never keep up their end of the bargain if Romanoff is dead.

“Maybe not at first she won’t.”

“What are you going to do, torture her?” Kamala asks dryly, glancing around the rock-lined swale as though expecting to see a rack or an iron maiden lying amongst the sparse tufts of brush. Foolishly, Jason’s gaze follows hers, and she’s able to reset her footing in that second of inattention. She’s almost close enough to kick the gun out of his hand.

“I’m going to do what I was told,” says Jason angrily. “And so are you, or I might as well put you down right here.”

When Kamala had tried to shoot Jason – ten minutes or an eternity ago, or both – her muscles had seized up, her joints locking in place. She’d broken out in a cold sweat, certain that if she did manage to push past the pain, if she fired that gun, something terrible would happen. A heart attack. An aneurysm. Worse.

She’d had no such reaction when she’d killed Witten last summer, but then Fisher’d had no reason to protect her husband. What if Kamala had tried to shoot Ajax, or Saja, or any of the other Institute operatives? Would she have been paralyzed by that same pain, that same fear, or had Fisher only recently decided to keep her on a tighter leash? “I don’t think you can,” she tells Jason.

He fires. The shot goes wide, or is placed wide; she can’t tell. The bullet slaps into the side of the swale behind her with a horrendous, echoing _crack_ , kicking up chips of rock that ricochet against her back and legs. A warning, or a last-minute involuntary reaction? Either way, she has to press her advantage. She brings up her right leg—

And he shoots her in the left. At least, her left leg suddenly goes stiff and numb, as though turned to stone, and she finds herself face-down in the cool sand without any memory of falling, gasping in shock and anger. She looks back, sees the dark blood flowing onto the rocks – flowing is bad, but spurting would be worse – and yet there is no pain, only heat and pressure and grit between her teeth.

The pain will come soon; she knows this, even though she’s never been shot since entering Fisher’s service. What the mind may forget, the body remembers.

Jason’s booted feet appear beside her face, sliding from one side to the other as her vision swims. Big boots. Thick leather. She can’t push herself up; she couldn’t even bite his damned ankles. She’s so _weak_ …

“Sloane told me I’d have to keep my eye on you,” says Jason’s voice. “She told me ever since Colombia, you were compromised.”

 _That’s not true_ , says Kamala silently _. When I left Villavicencio I was as strong as I’d ever been. It was the night Lycaon broke us out of SHIELD custody that everything changed, that everything fell apart. My loyalty was rewarded with apathy and betrayal._

_Maybe my programming was never that tight to begin with. Maybe I was in Fisher’s thrall because I wanted to be, because I was happy there, because I’d decided that she was my family and worth killing for. Maybe if I’d wanted to fight it, I could have broken free, like Romanoff. But it was after our escape, after the truth came out, that I did decide to fight. _

Exhausted, she closes her eyes. _And it’s been downhill ever since._

A gunshot, and then another, again with that horrible ear-splitting echo against the rocks. If she can hear the sound, at least he didn’t shoot her in the head. In the back, then, but there’s still no pain. No heat. No pressure. No blood boiling up in her lungs.

“Ugh.”

She opens her eyes. Jason’s boots are there still, and then his knees, and suddenly his whole big body is laid out in front of hers on the ground. His eyes are closed. His mouth is open, his lips frosted with sand. He does not breathe.

A car door slams. “Are you dead?”

Somehow, the thought of being facedown in the dirt in front of Romanoff gives Kamala the strength to roll onto her back. Her left leg protests this treatment, throbbing dully in time with her heartbeat.

In the east, the cloudless sky has lightened to dim, gunmetal gray. Desert sunrises are beautiful things, but this morning’s is still hours away and now she doesn’t know if she’ll be around to see it.

The gray fades to black, to white, to red, to silver. There is finally pain as something is tightened around her leg. Romanoff is trying to staunch the blood. Kamala tries to wave her off. Better to die like this – gently, quietly – instead of in terror and pain when her time runs out in four days. Or is it three? How long has she been lying on the ground with dirt on her tongue?

A man’s voice. Not Jason. Jason’s dead. Too bad. He didn’t deserve to die. Even though he shot her. Bastard. But this man says something about a hospital, and Romanoff’s voice agrees, then she hears the man say _Banner_ and _Jane_ and _Stark will meet you_. He keeps talking but now she is being lifted and the pain is incredible, bursting like bright points of light behind her closed lids.

A cold wind takes her, a swooping weightlessness in her stomach, and this must be what it feels like when Yama takes a soul to Naraka. She cannot feel the noose around her neck, but she can feel something wrapped tightly around her left leg – what happened to her leg? – and she senses, although its not possible, that she is flying.

 

(45)

On the other side of the window, beyond a set of cheap plastic vertical blinds that click-clack against each other like chattering teeth, the coming morning still seems like more of a possibility than a certainty, as though it’s likely the sun may just give up and go back to bed.

Clint had tried to catch a few more hours of sleep after the aborted phone call, but that had proved impossible. He had simply lain on his back beside Julie’s softly-snoring form, staring up into the darkness, listening to the thrumming of his racing heart as his mind gnawed over every permutation of fact and chance and feasibility.

Had that really been Natasha? If he couldn’t recognize her face when it was in front of him, how could he trust his senses to identify her voice over the phone? _Are you okay? We found Fisher’s body. Clint, this girl… if you have her, you need to be careful…_ Then Manesh’s voice, speaking another language – speaking _Russian_? – and nothing but the impersonal hum of a dial tone…

And two sides of his mind at war with themselves.

_She needs your help._

They’re just trying to lure you out—

_She’s out there, right now._

It’s a trap. A trick—

_She knew about the girl._

Of course she did. They’ll say anything to get her back. I can’t leave her behind, and I can’t take her into danger. And I don’t even know where Natasha is—

Finally he had risen from the bed, pacing the room, alternating between packing their meager belongings and peering through the window. He has a partial view of the parking lot and the walkway to the front office, although he isn’t yet sure what he expects to see. In the gray light all the cars look dusty, as though they’ve been sitting there for decades, untouched; the total lack of foot traffic near the office gives the morning a post-apocalyptic feel, like maybe he and Julie are the only people left in the world.

When he turns around he’s startled to find her eyes open, silently tracking his movements, although her small body is still curled against the pillows. “How long have you been awake?” he asks brusquely, embarrassed at being caught off-guard.

She blinks. “A few minutes. Why?”

“The staring thing. It’s creepy.”

She pushes herself into a sitting position and shrugs, as though to say _I’ve heard that before_ , and Clint’s embarrassment turns to something more like guilt. “Are we leaving?”

“Eventually.” Clint glances back out the window and stifles a sigh. “Part of me thinks that if they had the resources to find us here, they would have by now. And they would have come while it was dark. But maybe I’m overestimating their abilities.” Or maybe Lycaon’s people don’t care about flying under the radar because they know they can count on someone else to come after and mop up after them.

Julie swings her legs over the side of the bed. Her feet dangle a good ten inches above the floor. “What about your friend? The one you were talking to on the phone?”

He’s surprised. “You were awake for that too?”

“I heard it in my sleep, and then I remembered it when I woke up,” she says simply, as though that’s perfectly normal. “You said we were in Las Vegas, and then you sounded worried and said, ‘Nat, what’s wrong?’ and then you hung up.”

Clint doesn’t remember using Natasha’s name, doesn’t really remember much after he heard Manesh’s panicked voice, but the girl’s words have the ring of truth. “I thought… maybe she could help us,” he says, feeling foolish.

“Do you have to go help _her_?” presses Julie, and she shrinks a little when she says it, as though cringing against the answer she expects.

Clint’s been partners with Natasha long enough that the thought of _not_ going to her aid is strange to him, foreign and cruel, but he has no illusions about his new reality. “No,” he says, although it hurts more than expected. _Don’t know where she is. Don’t know how I’ll react when I see her. Don’t know if I can trust her or my own eyes and ears._ “She’s… very good at taking care of herself,” he continues, which is true enough. “And I promised that I was going to look after you, so that’s what I’m going to do.” _But I have no idea how._

She doesn’t answer, just lapses back into that watchful silence – which, no matter how bad he feels about thinking it, is absolutely unsettling. So Clint goes back to the window and says, in an offhanded tone, “Remembering things you hear while you’re asleep? That must… come in handy.”

“Maybe,” says Julie solemnly. “Once when I was four a doctor did an experiment. He had me listen to a recording of a story while I was asleep. A story I’d never heard before. When I woke up he asked me questions about it, and I got them all right.” She’s not bragging; her tone is flatly matter-of-fact. “He thought I could learn in my sleep. Subconsciously. History, languages… all sorts of things. But my parents said no. My father said he didn’t want me to be any creepier than I already was.” When Clint looks back at her, she shrugs again. “He wasn’t saying it to be mean. They were good parents. They just never knew what to do with me.”

Clint opens his mouth… and then shuts it again, not sure what to say. He’s not exactly an authority on parenting, good or otherwise. Besides, hadn’t he himself called her ‘creepy’ not five minutes ago? Should more tact be expected from a father, or less?

Movement from outside catches his eye, saving him from having to tackle any thorny moral issues, although he might have preferred that to the sight of a squad car rolling up in front of the motel’s office.

He thinks of what maybe-Natasha had said, about Fisher being dead; if the clinic had been found, if Julie’s existence is now common knowledge, it made sense that law enforcement’s put an APB out for her. Maybe there’s one for both of them, if either SHIELD or Lycaon are in on it, and there’s no reason not to suspect that either group might hold sway over the Las Vegas Police Department.

“Come on,” he tells Julie, stepping away from the window and slinging his pack over his shoulder. “We’re getting out of here now.”

*

They walk between the rows of cars in the motel parking lot – or Clint walks while Julie runs ahead, shielded from sight as she tugs experimentally on door handles – and are rewarded when the passenger’s side door of a thirty year-old BMW coupe opens as though in invitation. Julie climbs into the seat and leans across the console to unlock the driver’s side door, then watches in squint-eyed fascination as Clint slides behind the wheel and pulls a screwdriver from his backpack. He’s got the steering column cover off and is pulling wires free before it occurs to him that this may not be an appropriate demonstration for a meddlesome girl genius with seemingly perfect recall, and he makes a mental note to give her a stern and completely hypocritical lecture on law-breaking some time later.

If there is a later.

 

(46)

In a gas station bathroom in Henderson, Nevada, just south of Vegas, Natasha uses a damp paper towel to wipe the last flakes of dried blood from her temple. Her head aches, but it’s a manageable pain, a pain she can box up and set aside until the crisis has passed.

When she emerges, weary and sore but at least presentable, she finds Tony Stark leaning against the stolen Institute Jeep, dressed in slightly-rumpled khakis, a short-sleeved Henley, and a baseball cap embroidered with the gaudy _Welcome to Las Vegas_ sign. He’s drinking a Big Gulp.

Torn between relief and annoyance, Natasha crosses her arms. “I thought you were going after that fake FBI agent.”

“Alleged fake FBI agent,” Stark corrects. “Change of plans. Thor told you about the party back in Bugtown?”

Natasha nods. “Jane and Banner believe they have discovered how to close the rift,” the Asgardian had told her, standing beside the wrecked car with the semiconscious Kamala in his arms, “but they require someone with the power of flight.” Meaning, of course, either Thor or Stark… and all things considered, Thor was the better choice.

“Isn’t SHIELD still on-site?” Natasha had asked.

“They will not help. Jane says they wish to study the rift and perhaps capture one of the creatures alive. I believe that would be unwise.”

She had agreed, and that was all there was to it. Thor had departed with Manesh, destined for Puente Antiguo with a brief stop-over at a trauma center in Santa Fe, leaving Natasha with the dead Jason, his idling Jeep, and very few answers. She’d retrieved her broken cell phone from the Chevy’s carcass and mentally plotted the fastest route to Las Vegas.

“Suit’s in the Jeep,” Stark says now, as though she’d asked, taking a long pull from his Big Gulp before tipping the brim of his cap. “Thought it might be better to stay incognito for a while.”

Natasha raises her brows. “The Arizona authorities already know we’re in the area.”

“I think they’ll sit on it as long as they can.” He leaves unspoken what they both know: aside from the likelihood of Lycaon’s minions prowling the region is the very real presence of SHIELD agents in the neighboring state. They’ll come looking for Fisher too, sooner or later, and Natasha worries what their interest might be in the girl once they learn of her existence. There was a good reason Natasha had never surrendered the Volgograd drive, after all. Learning about the Phase Two tech had only made her more wary of what Fury and the Council might be capable of.

“We should still hit the road,” Stark adds, slapping the Jeep’s rear fender almost affectionately.

Natasha shakes her head. “We need to find new wheels. The Jeep is Fisher’s and it has a tracking—“

“I know,” Stark interrupts, straightening and walking around to the passenger’s side. “How do you think I found you? JARVIS already killed it.”

“Are you sure?”

He seems insulted as he swings himself up into the seat. “Am I sure? Of course I’m sure. Where’s the phone Barton called you on?”

Resigned, Natasha climbs behind the wheel and passes over the broken cell, its casing cracked and its screen shattered in the crash. Wordlessly Stark takes it, holding it back to back with his own phone. “This’ll just take a minute…”

The phone chirrups, the screen brightening, and Natasha leans over. “That was quick.”

Stark shakes his head. “That’s Steve,” he says, answering the call, holding the phone in front of his face. “Where are you, Cap?”

 

(47)

The four-person strike team arrives at McCarran as the sun is rising. Their leader, Lazarri, wants the money up front… money that John doesn’t have, not after paying for the girl.

That’s a mistake he will soon rectify. He’s tasked a pair of hackers in Montana with retrieving the funds from Fisher’s bank account, although he’s decided to let Artemiev keep his finder’s fee. At the moment, with everything up in the air, it seems prudent to stay in favor with the smuggler.

He has enough on hand to pacify the mercenaries for now, at least; nothing simultaneously paralyzes and focuses small minds like the sight of bundled cash. Lazarri is the only one with the presence of mind to ask about the time frame. “We’re waiting for dark, aren’t we?”

“No,” says John. The longer they wait to move, the better the chances that Barton will be able to skip out of the city… or, worse, that his friends will come riding to his rescue. And the moment any of those freaks show their faces, the local and national and international media will come pouring in, the bloggers and the groupies and all the rest of them, completely obliterating any chance to recover the girl with even a modicum of stealth. “We go in hard, we get out fast. He’ll never expect an assault in broad daylight.”

“That’s because it’s stupid,” says Lazarri, but he looks strangely mollified. Men like him despise waiting around, and he believes that a faster job means a quicker payday. “You know where they are, then?”

“I was able to trace Fisher’s Jeep to where Barton abandoned it on the Strip. Traffic and a few private networked cameras tracked him and the girl to a storage unit, a strip mall, and finally a motel about three miles from here. He checked in under the name Hearst.”

Lazarri and his pals look impressed. John doesn’t intend to tell them that the actual tracking was accomplished by his contact in the NSA. That misguided fool believes that John is an independent journalist, that he will use the information she gave him to expose the misuse of government surveillance programs, and that her computer-based pursuit of Barton and the girl was a test of the software’s capabilities.

Of course, he’ll have to burn her eventually, after he’s created his own back door into the NSA – the ones with a conscience are always the most unpredictable

*

There are three police cruisers arrayed in front of the motel, but John doesn’t dare reveal his dismay to his new employees. He tells Lazarri to keep the engine running and leaves the three other mercenaries sitting in the backseat, like children on a road trip, without a word of explanation. He wishes that DeGrasse was here. The doctor has a way with people that John, despite all of his experience in the world, can only attempt to mimic. He is a man of action and ideals, not idle conversation.

There is a cop still sitting in one of the cruisers, typing on a dash-mounted computer. She looks up warily at John’s approach, but rolls down the window once he flashes his counterfeit FBI credentials. “What’s the situation, officer?” he asks.

“BOLO out of Havasu,” she tells him, sounding slightly puzzled. “Possible child abduction. Desk clerk called in, reported seeing them, but they’d already cleared out. We’re setting up a perimeter, checking cameras.”

John nods tersely and hopes that his anger, if palpable, will be attributed solely to his quarry’s narrow escape. But it’s worse than that: the authorities are now aware of the girl. But how? Only a handful even know of her existence: DeGrasse, Artemiev, Fisher and her robots... no one who would benefit from going public. And Barton, of course, but he’s in hiding.

“Hey, are you here with…” begins the officer, but John isn’t listening any longer. He turns away and walks back to the Suburban.

“Problem?” asks Lazarri as John closes the door. His tone is slightly insolent. He probably would have driven away without John if he had been paid up front.

“No.” John closes his eyes. Thinking.

“I don’t like the look of all those cops.”

“It’s fine.” He opens his eyes. “If the cops are here, they won’t be where we’re going.”


	13. Part Thirteen

** PART THIRTEEN **

_"That corpse you planted last year in your garden,_   
_"Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?_   
_"Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?”_

_\- T.S. Eliot_

 

(After)

_I am twenty-nine, and I hold my father’s hand._

_The doctors and nurses come and go, other patients and their visitors pass at the open door, but I don’t have eyes for anyone else. I tell him about Prague, about the man who died by my hand five months ago, and his expression hardens. “I wanted you to have a normal life,” he says, pained._

_“What’s normal?” I ask, laughing humorlessly. “I promised that I was going to kill him. I told him to his face. You wouldn’t want me to be a liar, would you?”_

_He’s silent for a long time. Finally: “Why now?”_

_I look at my father. He is in his sixties and they say sixty is the new forty, but he has traveled a harder road than most. “It really started after Sasha was born,” I admit. “I couldn’t stop thinking about people coming for her, people like him, because of who she was.” The nightmares were always the same: the house burning, my sister in the arms of a gray-eyed monster. “When I found out about Marisol,” I continue, putting my free hand on my stomach, “it was like I was… possessed. I thought, what if she’s like me. What if they find out about her?”_

_His fingers tighten around mine. “Artemiev wasn’t a threat. Not anymore.”_

_“No,” I admit. “But there are others. There’s always others. I wanted to send them a message.”_

_There’s movement at the door, and Howie pokes his head into the room. His familiar dark eyes and freckled face are comforting. “Your mom’s here,” he tells me quietly._

_Dad’s eyes brighten. “What about your girlfriend?”_

_“Uh…” Howie runs a hand over his face, trying to hide the inevitable blush. We’ve all been pretending not to know about him and Sasha – the family connections made it a little awkward – but the time for feigned ignorance is past. “I think she’s working… you know how bad she is about keeping her phone on…”_

_“Did you try Kate’s?”_

_Now it’s my turn to look surprised. “You know?” I blurt._

_“Of course I know,” Dad says, sounding both amused and annoyed._

_A voice on the PA pages Dr. Stark, and Howie is so relieved at the interruption that he breaks into a grin. “Saved by the bell,” he quips, vanishing, leaving my father and me staring at each other in an empty room._

_“She made me promise not to tell,” I say. “She thought you’d worry.”_

_“I’d worry if the two of you were accountants or school teachers or dentists. It’s my job,” he says gently, squeezing my hand one more time as he stands. “Angel’s probably wearing a hole in the waiting room floor. I’ll go get him.”_

_He kisses my cheek and leaves, and I fold both hands across my belly. Any time now, I think, feeling the start of another contraction. I’m scared as hell, mostly, but a small part of me is unspeakably relieved that I’ll be bringing my daughter into a world with no Christopher Artemiev in it._

 

(48)

They leave the BMW in a casino parking lot and walk back to the cache. There are a few other pedestrians sharing the sidewalk with them; tourists getting an early start – although most of them are headed east, towards the Strip – as well as bleary-eyed gamblers who haven’t yet seen their beds and long-suffering Vegas natives just trying to get to work. Clint knows there aren’t as many surveillance cameras here, away from the main veins and arteries of the bustling cities, but he avoids walking in front of ATMs and through busy intersections whenever possible. Sometimes he tells Julie to walk ahead of him, especially when she can insinuate herself into a group of children.

The cell phone weighs heavily in his pocket, a loadstone dragging him down. He wants it to ring, and yet he’s terrified of who might be on the other end. He knows he should call Stark or Steve or _someone_ , but the uncertainty – of their reaction, of his, of what he might learn – keeps him from doing what he knows he should. _Not yet. Not yet. Wait until we’re off the street._

At any moment he expects a police car to roll to a stop alongside them. He tries to plan ahead, to think through his options, but the truth is that they’re nearly nonexistent. If the authorities are looking for Julie, they’ll stop him, search him, and take him into custody. They’ll find his weapons and other gear. They’ll link him to the fire in the desert and the dead bodies, charge him with murder and arson and God knows what else, and in the meantime Julie will disappear into the system. It’d be the next-best thing to handing her up to their enemies on a silver platter.

 _We should never have left the storage unit,_ he thinks, watching the faces of passersby for undue interest. _I should have gone out alone and got what we needed and made her stay there, out of sight, until I’d figured out what to do. I wasn’t thinking straight. But who would have thought the cops would get involved so quickly?_

The storage center is on a quiet side-street. The front office is flanked by four long two-story windowless buildings, all painted the same desert-beige, with barrel-tile roofs in need of repair, hunkered in the shadow of a three-floor medical diagnostic center to the east. The storage office won’t be manned until nine, but customers are given a code to operate the front gate and the entry doors after-hours… a must-have for Clint when he’d been shopping around for a place a decade ago.

The stairwell of Building C is cool, with a musty smell that brings back faded memories of the night before: stumbling up these steps, barely conscious, with a pajama-clad Julie in his wake. Not his finest moment, really. If Julie’s thoughts run along the same lines, she’s circumspect enough – for once – not to mention it.

Each unit features a rolling metal door, painted a garish orange, with an electronic lock. “Déjà vu,” says Julie, looking up at the door. “Now what?”

Clint hesitates. If that really was Natasha he’d talked to a few hours ago, if she’s okay, then she’ll know where to find them. But that’s two too-many ‘ifs’ for his liking, and if it comes down to choosing either the Avengers or the ‘proper authorities’ to look after the girl, there’s really no contest. Stark’s fame and money will keep Lycaon away, and the other guys seem like maybe they’d be good with kids, given a chance…

“You’re going to go inside,” he tells Julie, setting down his bag. “You’re going to stay away from the guns and… well, just try not to touch anything for five minutes.”

Her eyes narrow. “Where are you going?”

“Just the roof,” he assures her. “Just to make a phone call. To the other Avengers. You know, the ones with superpowers.”

He tries to smile. She doesn’t buy it. He expects her to ask _why didn’t you call them last night_ and if he’s honest he’ll have to say _because I wasn’t sure if I could trust them_ and if she asks _so what changed_ all he’ll be able to tell her is _things are more desperate now than they were eight hours ago_. But she doesn’t say anything, as though they’ve already had this conversation without his knowing it, as though she’d extracted the truth from his mind. He crouches down. “Listen, kid, the thing is… I thought I could do this on my own. I thought I had to.  It’s been… it’s been a rough couple of days for me, too,” he confesses. “But I’m out of my element here, and we need to trust someone.”

She looks back at him levelly, watching him with those cool gray eyes. Maybe most kids would be beside themselves at the prospect of meeting Iron Man or Captain America, but she understands what he isn’t saying. There are no guarantees. He’s promised to take care of her, but he’s only one man. He can’t even control lightning or turn himself green.

“I trust _you_ ,” she says finally. “Do what you think is right.”

He feels an unexpected surge of gratitude as he rises to his feet, a complicated tangle of emotion that tightens in his throat as he punches in the code, reaches down, turns the lock and pulls up the door. It rattles loudly in its frame, and it’s only at its apex, in the sudden silence, that Clint hears it: the muffled echo of footfalls in the stairwell behind them.

“Go,” he tells Julie sharply, and she scampers inside without a word, into that nest of weapons and old clothes and fake IDs that’s the best safety he can offer her. He yanks down on the door; he sees her turn to watch as that bright orange barrier falls between them: a flash of auburn hair, a clenched fist, one sneakered toe.

He engages the lock, straightens, resets the keypad, turns, reaches for his gun, and something hard and hot punches through his shoulder. He falls hard back against the rolling door, as though pinned to it like an insect, and feels the handgun tumble from his nerveless fingers.

 

(49)

The moment Stark ends his call with Cap, JARVIS chimes in with his own news. He’s traced Clint’s cell phone to a motel in Vegas, but the cops are already there and Clint and the girl have disappeared. Stark mutters something dark and uncomplimentary about _pain in the ass small-town detectives_ but Natasha shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she says, feeling hopeful for the first time in days. “I think I know where he is.”

*

The storage is quiet and still, shaded from the rising sun by a taller building. No pedestrians. Just a few passing cars. No police.

They park on the street, and Stark hesitates before opening the door. Natasha can see him thinking about his suit, folded neatly away in the backseat, and of how much attention it would attract. “Do you want to stay in the car?” she asks sweetly, and he shoots her a nasty look.

An electronic metal gate sits a few yards from the sidewalk, plastered with warnings about trespassing and cameras and unauthorized personnel. Under different circumstances, Natasha might have enjoyed scaling the fence, leaving Stark behind to hack the lock – it doesn’t hurt to occasionally remind the guy that he’s human, after all – but her impatience to get inside overrides her desire to teach lessons in humility. She punches in the code and the gate swings open.

They pass the dark and shuttered front office, an open Dumpster, a forklift and a stack of pallets – all silent, all motionless, and yet somehow also vaguely threatening. Every empty space is a hideaway, every piece of equipment a potential weapon. Natasha draws her firearm; Stark grimaces, but remains silent as she raises three fingers with her free hand and points. _The third building._

She doesn’t have to tell him to stay behind her.

Lanes separate each of the four long structures, each wide enough to accommodate trucks as well as a variety of moving equipment. Every block of units has elevators with which to access the second floor, but Natasha moves towards a side door marked STAIRS.

She pulls the door open, steps in fast and low with weapon drawn, and by the fitfully-flickering light of a florescent panel she spots the Sig Sauer. The 40-cal lies on the floor, not far from the booted toe of a man dressed all in black, who sees her through the eye holes in his balaclava. He gasps something unintelligible – maybe an exclamation of surprise, maybe a whole-hearted plea for help – and then his eyes dim as he slips into unconsciousness.

The second man, dressed in a dark but dusty suit, releases his chokehold – the masked victim tumbles to the ground with a graceless thud – and looks up into the barrel of Natasha’s Glock.

White male, late-forties, hazel eyes, sandy hair, tanned skin, a five-o-clock shadow at six in the morning: Natasha shuffles through the pictures in her mind, decides this man is a stranger… and yet it seems somehow that she _should_ know him. And it definitely seems, as he raises his empty hands, palms toward her, that there is a flicker of recognition in _his_ eyes – recognition, wariness, and something else she can’t put her finger on.

“Agent Bernhardt,” drawls Stark, joining the strange tableau in the stairwell and closing the door behind them. “Fancy meeting you here.”

A wry half-smile tilts up one corner of the suited man’s mouth. “Mr. Stark. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“ _Agent_ Bernhardt?” demands Natasha. “You’re SHIELD?”

“FBI,” says Bernhardt. “I have my identification in my pocket, if you’d…” he wriggles his fingers.

Natasha shakes her head, motioning that Bernhardt should move towards the other side of the stairwell, and covers him while Stark checks on the man in the balaclava. “Alive. I think. No ID.” He scoops up the Sig and strips off the stranger’s mask. “Anyone you know?”

“No,” says Natasha, turning back to Bernhardt. “You’re looking for the girl, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t know anything about a girl until Detective Avraham issued that BOLO,” the man replies, which is a total non-answer.

“You told _me_ you were looking for Fisher,” says Stark. He looks a little ill at ease with the Sig in his hand, as though he’d give anything to trade it for a repulsor beam. “She’s dead, and you’re here. Without backup, apparently. It’s kind of weird, Chuck, I’ve gotta tell you.”

Bernhardt clenches his jaw and lets his hands drop to his sides. “You really want to stand here discussing this?” He gestures rudely to the unconscious man. “Do you have any idea who he’s working for?”

“Yes,” says Natasha coolly, thinking about her conversation with Steve, Agent Hill… and Agent Park. “We do.”

 

(50)

At first, in the haze of pain, the voices around him don’t even seem to be speaking English.

_I really hate getting shot._

Clint’s on the ground. His temple throbs where it hit… something. The wall, or the floor, or someone’s boot, or all three. His left shoulder is on fire and his arm is like lead, a heavy, numb _thing_ lying by his side, and the smell of blood is heavy on the air. Rough hands brusquely pat him down, roll him onto his side, let him fall back. He cracks one eyelid and the panels of florescent lights overhead sear his vision.

He knows he could be on his feet in a few seconds, but he’d be unsteady and unarmed, and the forest of booted feet and black legs that surrounds him argues for staying where he is and feigning unconsciousness. He’s alive, and right now alive is the only way he can be of any use to the girl on the other side of that rolling door.

Unless, of course, they intend to try and torture the code out of him.

But no, he’s forgotten he’s living in the twenty-first century now, and if he’d been able to fool a high-security lab’s super-advanced retinal scanner while under Loki’s control, these guys will be able to bypass a simple electronic lock in no time flat.

_Should’ve shot up the keypad._

Words filter through his pounding skull. English words, distorted by pain and by accents. _Dispose. Cameras. Airport. Paid._ They make sense in isolation if not in context. He hears _find_ again and again, until he’s not sure it isn’t just an echo in his head. _Find find find._

He dares another peek. Masked faces stare down at him, and eyes meet his through the holes in a mask. Lips and tongue and teeth move, issue a command. Something crashes into the side of his head, and he blacks out for real this time.

*

“…led us here… distraction…”

He’s vertical now. Kind of. Propped up against a wall. Hands tied behind his back, blood slippery on his fingers, and his shoulder burns like the muscles are ripping apart. Nothing compares to his skull, though. He didn’t even feel this bad after Nat beat the shit out of him on the Carrier. He’s afraid to open his eyes, afraid to lift his head, afraid the light and motion will make him puke all over himself like a freshman at a frat house.

_Ought to have listened to the doc about wearing that helmet._

One eye. One eye should be safe. Left eye. Right won’t open anyway. Swollen shut. Caked with blood.

He’s inside the unit, leaning against the back wall. Still wearing his jacket, which is a good sign; they’d been careless while frisking him. The big rolling door’s still up, and a guy in combat gear – P90 on a strap, Sig in his hands, face covered – is standing guard in the threshold.

Two other men are inside the unit, their masks rolled up onto their foreheads, dressed for combat in black tac gear and high-collared ballistic vests. One of the guys is white, maybe European, with the type of big-nosed profile they used to stamp on coins. The other man is black, older, grimmer.

_I know you…_

Around them, the place is trashed. Cabinet doors ajar, contents spilling out: first aid kit, meal bars, bottled water. Trunk overturned, clothes strewn haphazardly, but the weapons, the vest, anything with tactical significance has been carefully stacked up on the other side of the unit.

No sign of Julie.

“…haven’t heard from DeGrasse… contact with Fisher…”

Clint looks up and feels an insane burble of laughter building up in his throat. For a moment he thinks its going to come along with a chaser of vomit, but he swallows back the nausea. “Fisher,” he murmurs. His own voice is like a full-on brass band playing the 1812 Overture between his ears, but at least he can still talk.

The two men walk up to him. The black guy looks pissed, but it’s the other one who bends down and jams the barrel of a pistol beneath Clint’s chin. It’s still warm from the last time it was fired. “Where’s the kid, shithead?”

Clint can barely swallow with the gun pressed into his larynx, but he can still laugh again. So he does. “Doesn’t matter if you find her,” he says thickly, ignoring the _boom-boom-boom_ of his heartbeat in his temples. “Fisher’s dead.”

There’s a moment of silence, as though these two full-grown men need some time to analyze the complexity of those words. Then Big Nose lets loose with a string of epithets, digs the barrel in one last time, and stands, turning to scowl at his buddy. The older man hardly seems to see him – his eyes are both hard and thoughtful, examining Clint as though considering the likelihood that he’s just having his chain yanked – finally pulling a cell out of his pocket and tossing it to Big Nose. “Go outside, call DeGrasse. Tell him where we are.” His voice is accented. British? No, not exactly…

“Maybe he did it,” offers Clint. He wants their eyes and their attention on him, not thinking about where the girl could be, not looking around the room. His lower lip is fat, his words slurred, but the important thing is to keep talking. “DeGrasse. Maybe he killed her ‘n split town. She’s not ’n easy person t’deal with. I speak from experience. But you know, right, Keyes? It is Keyes, isn’t it?”

But the bodyguard – or whatever he really is – doesn’t respond. He watches as Big Nose walks out of the unit, phone in hand, and stands in the middle of the unit with his arms crossed. He appears deep in thought, or perhaps trying to regain a sense of calm and control. Finally he speaks, his voice heavy with what might be genuine regret. “Fisher was problematic. But her research could have saved many lives.”

“Think you mean _destroyed_. She was a psychotic bitch and you know it.”

“Which was exactly why she needed to be on a short leash,” says Keyes, in a tone that implies he doesn’t disagree. “I can keep people like her and Artemiev under control. I can focus their talents towards the greater good.”

Clint snorts. It makes his face hurt. “Greater good? Really? That’s what you’re going with?”

“Nick Fury and his allies are obsessed with the unknowable,” Keyes continues. “Cosmic cubes and roads to other worlds and alien overlords. And yet he’s as aware as I that the means to humanity’s destruction have been in humanity’s hands for a very long time. When I was imprisoned I felt sure that was the end of it, that the world would collapse in on itself long before I ever breathed free air again. But I was reprieved, because there are others who understand.”

Now Clint elects to hold his silence. If this guy really wants to monologue, he can do so in the strictest sense of the word.

“They understand what the Soviets understood,” says Keyes, “that the threat is already here, that it is all around us, that we must secure our own shores before foolishly opening unknown doors onto the universe at large.” He pulls his Sig from its leg holster; dangling near Clint’s eye-level, through a haze of pain and adrenaline, the barrel looks as big as a God-damned cannon. “It’s a waste, if you’re telling the truth, if Fisher’s dead, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. There are others who can train the girl, and those who will come after. It won’t be the same, but it will be a start.”

“You’re not getting your hands on her,” says Clint. “What’s Plan B?”

Gunfire seems to erupt all around him, and for an instant Clint knows that Plan B must involve him dying, even though they still don’t have the kid, but almost simultaneously he realizes that it’s only a trick of concrete acoustics, because the armored man standing guard in the doorway drops like a sack of potatoes. As the last echoes of the shot die away, as the masked guard’s weapon falls from his lifeless hands, a voice rings out. “FBI!”

 

(51)

The man called Keyes, called John, known by a dozen monikers by assets in a dozen nations, once named Johan Sleutels but born Janos Roeske in a hospital in Pretoria more than fifty years ago, is not afraid of the FBI. He does not fear any legitimate authority, because he knows from hard experience how easily the power of authority can be mired in bureaucracy. His identification will proclaim that he has diplomatic immunity, his allies will come to his aid, and – should he be taken into custody – he will be a free man before the end of this day. An annoyance, an inconvenience, but ultimately not fatal to the mission.

What concerns Janos is that, according to his naive contact at the NSA, the FBI has yet to assign an agent to the matter of either the missing child or the erstwhile Fisher Institute. Something about agencies squabbling over jurisdiction. Bureaucracy.

So the man who shouts “FBI!” can not be from the FBI at all, and that is enough to give Janos pause. The Sig in his hand feels comforting, but also heavier than it ought.

Did the voice come from the direction of the stairs, or the elevators? Either way, the intruder should never have made it this far, should have encountered either Pryor or Kozel covering the entrances, and considering the distances involved in either direction certainly should not have been able to take out Davis with a single headshot. The presence of the uncanny, even in such limited quantities, turns his stomach, makes him think _Avengers_ , but the Avengers are all lights and bluster and brute force. Sound and fury signifying… well, not _nothing_ , but nothing like _this_.

The man calls again. “Step out of the unit with your hands on your head!”

It’s been some time since Janos has been really, properly in the field, but he thinks he’s pegged the direction of the voice. From the left. The stairs. So Pryor has been neutralized.

Lazarri would have taken the elevator down to make his phone call, but eventually he will return, and power will shift again. He needs only to stall the unknown interloper. He steps behind an especially large cabinet on the left side of the room, where he can keep out of sight from anyone who approaches the unit from that direction while also maintaining visual contact with Barton. The bastard is, unfortunately, still their best chance of finding the girl.

“This is the FBI! We know you’re in there, Roeske!”

Surprise catches Janos before the fear can set in, surprise and fear at the sound of his name spoken so casually, a name that has not been his own since his betrayal by the Council. It is a name the FBI could not possibly know…

“I _am_ here!” he bellows back, his body flushing with anger, sweat beading beneath the protective layers of jacket and vest. “But I don’t think I’ll come out just yet! I’ve got company, you understand!”

A pause. Janos imagines a hurried, whispered conference in the hallway. Could he make the doorway, swing around, shoot them while they remain frozen in indecision? The plan seems to have merit, but it’s been too long since he was in the field, too long, and the chance passes while he dithers. “Send the girl out. Then we can talk.”

Janos considers playing along. In a moment Lazarri will finish his phone call with DeGrasse; he will return by the elevator, the doors will open… if he is not prepared to engage the faux-FBI, at least he will provide the distraction Janos requires. Real agents might balk at the idea of storming around a blind corner into a concrete box where a child might be present in the line of fire, but Janos’s instincts tell him that, whoever this man is, he has no connection to the federal government. “I don’t have any girls at the moment, I’m afraid. I do have a man, though. He’s been wounded. We can barter for him, if you like.”

 

(52)

Stark, covering the stairwell door at their backs with the purloined Sig and looking entirely out of his element doing it, says, “You know, I could go downstairs, get the suit, be back in two minutes, tops…”

Natasha responds by stepping down hard on his right instep; Stark grits his teeth and mutters something that sounds like _practically naked_ and _prehensile suit_ but then, thankfully, shuts up.

Yes, in retrospect Iron Man might have come in handy in this situation, but there’s no time to reset the board.

The open door is nearly twenty yards from where they stand, hunkered down in a perfect concrete kill-box. She can see the black-clad body sprawled on the ground, and she’s not sure what’s more surprising: that this supposed federal agent was so happy to shoot first and identify himself later, or that he’d been able to drop the armored hostile with a single headshot. Men like him were supposed to be trained to go for center mass.

Bernhardt calls out “FBI!” and the creep shouts back, but there is no rush of triumph at having him cornered. There is a stairwell door at their backs and another at the far end of the hallway, and somewhere in between the door to an elevator that at any moment could open to admit a swarm of men in black with deadly weaponry and no qualms about using it.

“I do have a man, though. He’s been wounded. We can barter for him, if you like.”

Bernhardt glances at her – does he look alarmed? – and Natasha makes her move. Silently down the hallway, each foot precisely placed, no scuff or scrape of shoe leather, no movement that is not strictly necessary, her Glock a cool weight in her hands, her heart pounding in anticipation of what she might find.

At the edge of the open doorway she stops. She can only see a fraction of the storage unit from this angle – an open trunk, scattered clothing – and the hostile will be on the other side, waiting for her to step out, to expose herself as an easy target. If she had all of her gear, she’d have a modified flash-bang or smoke grenade or some other trick up her sleeve, but at the moment all she has is her gun and her wits.

So she goes in low and she goes in fast, sidestepping the dead man on the ground, watching for movement, waiting for the kiss of hot metal, dropping her shoulder in a controlled tumble to foil her enemy’s aim, but the expected shot does not come.

She looks into the unit and sees why.

Roeske – or Keyes, or whatever he’s calling himself – is half-hidden behind a large metal cabinet. She can see part of his face, his shoulder, his arm in the harsh florescent light, and she can see the gun that is pointed at Clint.

He’s on the ground, arms wrenched behind his back, blood dripping sullenly from one jacketed elbow, legs splayed out as though he’s forgotten exactly how they work. His lip is split and one eye nearly swollen shut, caked with blood, but the other eye is alert and watchful. He sees her and his body convulses in a brief, full-body spasm, as though he has touched a live wire, and she wonders if the madness is taking over him again, if he’s already forgetting who the real enemy is.

_Keep it together, Clint._

“You,” says Roeske, his visible eye bright with interest, one half of his mouth twitching into a wry smile. She knows Bernhardt and Stark are approaching but doesn’t dare look away, doesn’t _dare_. “You know, if I’d had _you_ , so much of this would have been unnecessary.”

Natasha suppresses a shudder. She doesn’t know this man, but she knows that look, that tone. She saw it in the eyes of the doctors and the generals: that avarice, that grasping claim of ownership that goes beyond carnal desire, and she has no doubt that she is speaking to Lycaon. “You told Fisher and Witten where to find me.” _The trees are a green and brown blur as the chopper falls, falls…_

The gun-hand does not waver, and the half-seen smile is fixed. “It was a show of good faith. A demonstration of my influence. She wanted revenge. He wanted… well.” Roeske shrugs as though to say _what every man wants_. “I thought it would be interesting to see if they could improve upon perfection.” He shakes his head. “Obviously, they couldn’t.”

Natasha has met those enamored of the Red Room, but few of them were ever in positions of power and influence. Knowing that this cretin had once sat on the Council – where the decision to fire a nuke at Manhattan could be made in one moment and, in the next, all responsibility for that decision evaded, all evidence erased – leaves her both sickened and incensed. “So you decided to start abducting little girls?”

“Soldiers are fine for muscle, but their ways are set. Their minds are closed.” He gestures dismissively at Clint as he says it, as a rich child might regard a broken toy. “ _Children_ are our future, Natasha. Great minds have always said as much.”

He’s stalling. She doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, but it’s nothing good, nothing she wants to hang around to see.

Options are limited. One entrance. No windows, no passable ventilation. She could shoot his exposed arm, but she fears missing that narrow target, fears the inevitable ricochet, fears leaving him another hand with which to pull the trigger. Or she could shoot him through the cabinet, trusting that the bullet, after punching through a few thin layers of metal – and whatever Clint might have squirreled away inside – would still carry enough force to, upon meeting with his vest, foul up his aim.

She chances another look at Clint, wondering if he’s ready to move, wondering if he’s able to move, wondering if he’s already lost it and is about to start ranting about Aten. He looks back at her, bloody and bruised, and he shakes his head, as though to say _I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no._

As in, _no, don’t come any closer, foul temptress_? Or, _no, don’t shoot the guy who’s pointing a gun at my chest_?

Both possibilities raise their own set of issues.

Bernhardt has sidled up to the other side of the doorway. At her nod, he risks a quick glimpse into the unit; he can’t have seen Roeske from that vantage point, but his face seems to go gray beneath his tan. Stark is still facing back towards the stairwell door, casting worried looks over his shoulder at regular intervals and probably biting the inside of his mouth bloody to keep silent.

Surprisingly, the next person to speak is Clint. His voice is rough with pain and slightly slurred. “Hey… you ever hear what Fisher’s nickname was for you?”

“Lycaon?” Roeske asks, chuckling. There’s more than a little relief in that half-hearted laugh, which only confirms Natasha’s suspicion. _He wants to keep us talking_. “Yes, I heard about that. Sloane thought herself quite the Greek scholar. The Lycaon of myth… he thought to test the divinity of the gods, you know.”

“He was a sick son of a bitch and a child-killer,” says Clint. “And Zeus kicked his ass.”

And with those words he thrusts his shoulders back against the wall and pushes himself to his feet—

\- and from the corner of her eye Natasha sees Bernhardt raise his weapon towards _her_ —

\- but she’s moving again, low and fast and over the threshold; Roeske’s widening eyes are on Clint, who stumbles forward: handcuffed, bloody, and unarmed –

\- Bernhardt’s gun goes off, and the echoes in this concrete tomb make it sound like an artillery barrage, but Natasha doesn’t feel the impact or the pain –

\- and now Roeske knows he’s erred, knows that they’ve been jarred out of stasis, knows that from this angle Natasha can make the headshot –

\- and she does, and the bastard is knocked back into the wall with a brain full of lead –

\- but not before he empties his own clip into Clint’s chest.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

** PART FOURTEEN **

_The dove descending breaks the air_   
_With flame of incandescent terror_   
_Of which the tongues declare_   
_The one discharge from sin and error._   
_The only hope, or else despair_   
_Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre-_   
_To be redeemed from fire by fire._

_\- T.S. Eliot_

 

(Before)

_Tears spill down the girl’s bruised cheeks, but they are not tears of fear or sadness. The child weeps in anger and frustration at her own helplessness. She is young, but she is strong._

_The parents argue in the other room. The father works at the railway, the mother is a teacher, but they are filled with a dark, poisonous resentment that knows no bounds of race, culture or profession. Their daughter – so strange, so proud – is the basin into which they pour their rage, their scapegoat, their sacrificial lamb._

_Now the girl pulls something from her pocket. Her hands shake, but they are sure enough to strike a small blossom of flame from the head of the match. Her shoulders heave, but when she drops the match into a pile of laundry, it is not a mistake._

_The girl is brilliant, said one of the mother’s coworkers, but she’s so distant. So angry. Damaged, she added, with a knowing look._

_Smoke curls up out of the little heap of cloth, and the girl sucks in a sharp breath. She looks down at her handiwork as though she has only just woken from a dream, and her expression is one of horror. She smothers the small flame before it can grow, waves frantically at the air to disperse the smoke, and throws the ruined clothing away before running from the room._

_Mary Charlotte, watching all this from the window, will return later. Inspired by the child’s bold act of defiance, she will set a fire. The house will burn, and the neighborhood with it. Unfortunately, she will lose track of the child for several days, but ultimately the urchin named Devi will be located and taken to the kemal ki sebhaa – the Lotus House – with all the other girls harvested by Mary Charlotte from these mean streets. The Russians are still looking for subjects, and where the Russians tread, others will follow soon enough._

_The parents will die, and Devi Namasri will vanish. She will become Anya and Pavarti and Kamala, each iteration more artificial, more twisted, more desperate than the last._

_It is Mary Charlotte’s first fire, but it won’t be her last._

 

(53)

The surgeon objects, but Maria insists on being in the room when Manesh is given the antidote.

It isn’t that Dr. Arnold has a problem injecting his patient with an unknown, untested substance – he is SHIELD, after all, and he’s seen a lot worse – but he dislikes that Maria is violating the sanctity of his operating room. Manesh has already been anesthetized and prepped for surgery, and Arnold resents the delay. “You could be costing her that leg.”

Maria simply hands him the vial. “If this doesn’t work, it won’t matter how many legs she has.”

So the antidote is administered… and, of course, nothing happens, seeing as how the patient is unconscious. But even if Manesh had been awake, Maria guesses that there would still have been no miraculous transformation. It will be days, or longer, before they know if Fisher’s commands have been annulled.

Park is waiting for her outside the operating room. Maria is surprised. “I thought you were going to Vegas with St- with Captain Rogers.”

He notices the slip, smiles wanly, but only says, “What could I possibly do that the Avengers couldn’t?” with a remarkable lack of irony.

“Arrest Roeske,” says Maria. “But I’m guessing you don’t want that.”

“When the South Africans realized Roeske had vanished, they kept it under wraps,” says Park obliquely. “They were frightened, or embarrassed, or they were in on it… I don’t know. By the time we found out, years had passed and he hadn’t surfaced. I hoped he was dead, but the prevailing wisdom was that, if nothing else, he had learned his lesson. That he’d live out his life quietly, unobtrusively. But if you’re right, if he’s got informers inside SHIELD… if he’s this person Fisher called Lycaon…”

“He’s too dangerous to be captured.”

Park looks pained. “I don’t want to use the term _civil war_ ,” he says quietly, “but it could cause a major split in the organization. And frankly, I don’t know what side Director Fury would be on.”

Maria frowns. “Fury would never condone what Roeske has done. I know you think I’m naive for saying that, but it’s not who he is.”

He hesitates, then shakes his head minutely. “I want to believe that. I do. But I’d rather not put it to the test.”

“You’re counting on the Avengers killing Roeske,” Maria retorts. “What if you’re wrong?”

Park laughs humorlessly. “Oh… I think you know Ms. Romanoff better than that.”

 

(54)

There’s no splatter of blood, no fountain of red gore as hot lead stitches a path across Clint’s torso, just a rust-colored smear painted on the concrete wall as he slides sideways. He lands hard on his back, hands still cuffed beneath his body, and lies still. God, so still…

Natasha’s vision is crimson-veiled; every breath comes slowly, laboriously, like she’s underwater, trapped in a blood-tinged sea with no floor and no surface.

Roeske is down, dead, not getting any deader, his skull coming apart like a melon rind, but the indisputability of his non-living state doesn’t wind back the last ten seconds, doesn’t mean she was smart enough or bold enough or fast enough. She can’t kill him again and she can’t look at Clint – can’t, can’t see the spreading pool of blood, can’t see whether his eyes are open or shut – so she spins on Bernhardt, too angry and soul-sick to wonder why she’s not already dead, too amped up to understand why he looks at her with such shock, why he lets his weapon clatter to the ground, until Stark bounds up between them, blocking her shot, gesturing behind her…

Against her better judgment, Natasha turns. Down the hall, through the blood-red film, she sees the body. Black-clad, like the other men. He’s lying prone on the floor, and the elevator door keeps trying to close on one booted foot.

Motion flickers at the edge of her vision, and she spins around. She still doesn’t want to look at Clint but she doesn’t want Stark or Bernhardt to look at him either, doesn’t want to be the last to know, to know for _sure_ , and she’s halfway across the unit before she realizes that the flicker was the opening of the largest storage cabinet, the metal one Roeske had been trying to hide behind. The doors swing open and a girl stumbles out, her pale, pointed face streaked with sweat or tears or both.

So the kid’s alive. Natasha feels no relief at this, no triumph, feels nothing but anger so strong it makes her nauseous and horror so livid it makes her weak. She drops to her knees at Clint’s side. Yanks the two halves of his jacket apart. Stares at the mess of his t-shirt, at the fresh blood staining the cotton…

Something jostles her arm. The girl. She’s on her knees too, staring at Clint, and Natasha opens her mouth to bark at the men to come get this kid, get her out of here, but then the girl says, “He’s okay. He’s alive.”

This statement is so foolish, so patently impossible, that her anger scrambles for purchase again. She has no special reverence for children, no illusions about their innocence, because she has seen what evil the smallest person can do.

In this case, in this moment, the greatest evil of all is hope. She reaches for the girl’s arm, prepared to grab her, haul her to her feet, push her away…

But the girl is faster. She grasps the hem of Clint’s shirt and yanks it up. The fabric doesn’t rise far, but Natasha gets a glimpse of black beneath the blue cotton, rather than bloodied flesh, and her breath catches in her throat.

“The blood’s from before,” says the girl breathlessly.

Natasha hears footsteps, Stark’s question, Bernhardt’s answer, although none of it coalesces into words. She puts on her hands on Clint’s chest for the first time and feels the cool hardness of a vest… and the almost imperceptible motion of his chest as he breathes in and out.

His eyes open so suddenly that she starts, and he sucks in a sharp breath: a sound of surprise, a sound of pain. Their eyes lock and Natasha waits, flooded with relief, frozen with fear.

The last time he looked at her it was with hate and loathing, as though she were the manifestation of every enemy he’s ever faced. Now his face is oddly blank, maybe taken aback by her presence, maybe simply dazed from his injuries.

Then he blinks, and his gaze sharpens, as though really seeing her for the first time: brows drawing down, lips pressed into a straight line…

“Ribs are probably broken,” says the girl matter-of-factly, looking up from her examination of Clint’s chest. “That was _stupid_. What if he’d shot you in the head?”

He appears startled by her presence, her nearness, or maybe simply the impertinence of her words, but after a moment the stern expression softens. His lips part as he looks between them, and the corners twitch into what might be the beginnings of a wan smile, and she thinks she hears him murmur something about “my girls…” just before he passes out again.

She’s not going to cry in front of everyone, in front of Stark and the girl and this strange agent whose identity she’s only beginning to suspect, not going to cry out of sheer, heartbreaking, weight-lifting relief, not going to cry because she’s _happy_ , for God’s sake, not, not, not.

 

(55)

Hospital smells and hospital sounds filter into Clint’s consciousness before he even opens his eyes, and for a second he indulges in one of those clichéd flights of fancy: _maybe it was all just a dream_.

Only for a second, though. His ribs are on fire, his shoulder aches, and those pains bring with them clear and incontrovertible memories. How long has it been since he was lying in that bed in New Mexico, everyone worried about the state of his brain? It seems like at least a week has passed, but in reality it’s been less than…

He opens his eyes. By the shade and angle of the light through the vertical blinds, it’s mid-afternoon. By the pain and stiffness in his arm and chest, it’s the same day. So… Less than thirty-six hours. No wonder he feels like shit.

Clint turns his head, and immediately feels a little less shitty. Stretched out on the neighboring bed, lying on top of the blankets, is Natasha. She’s on her side, one arm curled against her body, the other resting on her hip – at least one hand, he’s sure, is touching a weapon – and her eyes are closed, lips slightly parted, breathing deep and even. Exhausted sleep, he thinks, drinking in the sight of her, but the moment the words form in his mind, she stirs.

“Hi,” he says.

Her eyes open wide, and she sits up so quickly that he feels dizzy on her behalf. She’s dressed in black pants and a white shirt, and her hair is tousled into damp ringlets, and she’s _gorgeous._

He says nothing more, just looking at her – the shape of her nose, the curve of her lips, the line of her jaw, the arc of each eyebrow – wondering how in the hell he could ever have seen that face and not known it instantly, abashed and exhilarated and grateful beyond deserving. Natasha returns the heavy silence, moment for moment, pound for pound, and then with a rather desperate air – and a surprisingly tremulous voice – she says, “I love you.”

Clint doesn’t wonder if he’s dreaming, because his subconscious would never dare put those words in her mouth, but it takes him a while to wrap his brain around the truth of their existence. He has a vague memory of hearing them before; not even a real memory, just a feeling: a hunch, as insubstantial as smoke, that she’s repeating herself.

“Wow,” he says finally. “I guess I should get brainwashed and shot in the chest more often.”

She slides off her bed and steps up to his, looking down at him gravely. “Since Frankfurt,” she continues, ignoring his half-assed attempt at humor. “Since before… I don’t know. Maybe before New York. I don’t… I don’t have anything to compare to.”

She hesitantly puts a hand out towards his. He reaches up and captures her fingers. Just the tips. Her skin is warm and surprisingly soft. There’s a pulse oximeter on his index finger, which makes things a little awkward, but removing it would probably just piss off the duty nurse.

“I wanted to make sure,” says Natasha firmly. “Before anything else happened, I wanted to make sure you knew.”

“I knew,” he tells her. He’s always known, since long before she told him that she might never say it. Wanting to hear it had more to do with his pride than any doubt as to her feelings. He knew it in New York and Ohio. He knew it in Colombia and California and every place they’ve ever been.

Her hand twitches beneath his. It’s not a tremble; it’s reflex, muscle memory, like the way she can pluck a knife out of the air. She pushes on resolutely. “I shouldn’t have left you. It wasn’t because I didn’t care. Seeing you like that, thinking about what could have happened… it made it seem like I must care too much. And I tried to prove to myself that I didn’t.” She closes her eyes, shakes her head vehemently. “It made sense at the time.”

“And yet here we are again,” says Clint, trying to keep his tone light. He feels like if he matches her tone for tone, declaration for declaration, it might be too heavy. Natasha doesn’t do anything halfway, he realizes. Except that’s what they’ve been trying to do since Stark fetched them back from Germany, and it’s been killing them slowly.

Natasha opens her eyes. “Don’t you dare say ‘we’ve got to stop meeting like this.’”

“Wasn’t going to.” But his grin is guilty, and she knows it, and after a moment she returns his smile. But there is still that desperate quality in her eyes, in her voice, a hunger that trembles on an uncertain edge. As much as he’s smarting from her abandonment, she’s still hurting from what he said. _You need some time to yourself. To think. Maybe we both do._ Her smile is that of a woman waiting for the axe to fall.

It makes him think of another hospital room, after that mission in Montreal, the first time she was hurt on a SHIELD mission. She’d suffered in silent agony, expecting that they’d both be punished for her perceived failure, and he’d tried to set her mind at ease by cataloging his own battle scars. But she knows all of his scars now. He’s laid bare before her, even when he’s not.

He manages only the smallest, weakest, most pitiful tug on her fingertips, but she gets the message; she leans over the hospital bed railing, her free hand on his cheek, his jaw held firmly between her fingers and thumb, and kisses him.

It’s a good kiss, especially considering he’s got a bullet hole in one shoulder and is probably bruised from neck to sternum, considering his lip is split and aching, considering she breaks the kiss once to make this funny half gasp-half sob, considering that pretty much anybody could walk in at any moment. In fact, maybe all of those considerations are what make the kiss so _good_ , somehow.

And when she puts down the railing and carefully scoots in next to him on the narrow mattress, somehow managing to fill up all his senses even though they’re only just touching at shoulder, hip, and thigh… well, it’s not just good; it’s the most potent form of painkiller known to man.

*

“Steve took the girl to get something to eat about twenty minutes ago,” Natasha says, a few minutes – or an eternity – later. This close, he can smell soap and shampoo and the underlying perfume of her skin. She lowers her voice. “Is it true… Artemiev?”

Clint nods. He knows there’s both remembering seeing the bastard in Macau, and the conversation on the plane. _I would have killed him, if I’d been by myself._

“Did he… hurt her?”

He closes his eyes, feeling the slow burn of fury beneath his bruised and fractured ribcage. “I don’t think so,” he says, answering the question she was really asking, letting slide the fact that there are so many ways to be hurt. She doesn’t need him to tell her that. “What’s going to happen to her?”

“Technically, she’s in SHIELD custody right now.” Natasha laces her fingers together. Her hands are pale and elegant and strong in a way he’s always known but never aesthetically appreciated. “Park’s on his way,” she says, the words carefully neutral. “I assume he’ll make sure she’s returned to her parents…”

“She thinks her parents were murdered.”

Natasha hesitates. “Well, they must have appointed a guardian.”

“What if they didn’t?” _His_ parents hadn’t. Not anyone who’d wanted the job, anyway.

He can’t see her face, not without turning his head at a painful angle, but he can hear the worry in her voice. “Clint, what’s wrong?”

He opens his eyes. This isn’t a conversation he wants to have in this condition, in this place, but it’s a conversation that must happen. “I told her I’d take care of her.”

“And you did.”

Laughing hurts. A lot. Even a dry, humorless chuckle, which is the only possible response to her statement. All he’d done was get himself shot. If Natasha hadn’t been there… “You don’t understand.”

She’s quiet for a moment. People – he can’t see who, from this angle with the door half-shut – walk down the hallway with squeaky shoes, or pushing squeaky carts, and their voices are a low, droning counterpoint. Finally she says, carefully, “Help me understand.”

 _I can’t_ , he wants to say, _because_ _I don’t understand it either._ But the memory of Julie, standing in the hallway, with her blue robe and her fierce expression, a pint-sized island of calm and stillness in the middle of the smoke and the panic, comes to his mind and helps him find the words. “You met with Manesh?”

“I… yes.”

“What she did to me… her and Fisher… there’s no antidote.” His gaze goes to the IV stuck in his back of his hand. He can only _trust_ that the bag it’s connected to is not tainted with poison, after all. “It’s not like what they used on you. There’s no cure.”

He can feel her muscles tense. “That’s what she told me. But she must have been wrong about the effects. It must have worn off.”

Clint shakes his head. “I was so afraid,” he says, and the words are bitter in his mouth. He can remember all of it, everything he did, but the reasons why seem vague and abstract and _stupid_. “It was like the fear was running my body and I was just along for the ride.” Not so different than being Loki’s puppet, really. At least then he had been tied up so tightly, so full of purpose that he fully believed himself in control, except for those brief moments of terrible lucidity, when he saw what he was doing and almost begged for death.

In the thrall of Fisher’s crazy-juice, purpose was boiled down to impulse, and action was survival. Even stupid action, like walking face-first into the enemy’s lair, like blowing up the roof of a building he was inside. The first moment of sanity – or something approaching sanity – had come in that hallway.

“You were afraid of me,” says Natasha quietly.

“I was afraid _for_ you,” he corrects her, but he stumbles a bit over the words. He’d been prepared to shoot an arrow into her heart. He’d called her Aten. “I don’t know.” He also remembers that night in Ashmore General, watching the lights flare as Natasha left him, accepting that as her final repudiation.

Maybe, deep down, he had been more willing to believe that the woman who had left him wasn’t really the woman he loved after all.

That was all psychology, of course, and psychology was crap, but Fisher and her potions had an unfortunate history of making abstract, academic discussions distressingly real. “I found Julie while I was looking for you,” he continues, almost whispering now. “I realized I had to do something. To save her. And I don’t know when it happened, but eventually I realized that the fear wasn’t in charge anymore. I was still scared, but I could think, and I could act, without feeling like one wrong step was going to make my head explode.” Was it in the stolen Jeep, fighting the sedative? In the cache? In the motel room in Vegas, watching her sleep, curled up on her side? “It was like when I found her, I found you, too. And I need to… I need to keep my promise.”

She considers this. Or she considers that he’s completely lost it, but at least she doesn’t move away. “A child isn’t a stray dog,” she says uneasily. “You can’t just… we have to think about what’s best…”

“We can’t send her home. Not by herself.”

“Fisher’s dead. So’s Roeske. Lycaon. Whatever you want to call him.”

“Too many people know about her,” insists Clint, feeling sick. He’d expected her reluctance, but her sad tone unnerves him. “He had a partner. DeGrasse. There are people in SHIELD, now, who’d know where to find her. And… there’s Artemiev.”

Natasha stirs. Now he’s really afraid she’s going to slide away from him, out of the bed, but she only pulls back so that they’re face to face. Her brows are knit, her lips pursed. “Clint, what she’s been through… she needs…”

“What did you need?” he asks softly. “What would you have needed, if you were eight years old, and you’d been rescued, and your whole life had changed?”

She stares at him, aghast, objections trembling on her tongue, but behind her eyes he sees the whirl of thought and memory and pain. Clint watches her struggle and he _thinks and what would I have needed? Eight years old in the orphanage, Barney and me, and the eyes of the prospective parents that passed over us without seeing us, two boys from a screwed-up home, ready and willing to fight the world?_

He answers his own question. Both of them. “She needs people who’ll understand.”

Her lips part in dismay. “You don’t even like kids,” she says thinly.

“I’m not a kid. I’m a seven-and-a-half year-old pain in the ass.”

Only thorough training and an abiding desire not to cause further pain keeps Clint from jumping straight out of bed. At his side, Natasha sits up quickly, cautious of his injuries, and looks towards the door. There’s a chair there, an uncomfortable one of the no-padding-and-straight-back variety, and Julie sits in it. She’s holding a little plastic cup of red Jell-O, and a plastic spork is tucked behind her ear. “Where’d you come from?” Clint manages, although he sounds winded to his own ears.

The girl shrugs. She’s dressed in fresh jeans and a top with green polka-dots, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. “I figured you’d wake up as soon as I left. Jerk,” she says pointedly, and peels the plastic lid off her cup of Jell-O.

Clint looks back at Natasha, who just shakes her head – maybe in disgust, or rueful amazement, or something else altogether – and now she does ease off the mattress. And that’s good, because about twenty seconds later Steve hurries into the room after his lost charge, a gaggle of admiring nurses and doctors and patients in his wake, and their false sense of privacy is well and truly dispelled. He holds on to the memory of Nat’s kiss, and her voice saying _I love you_ , and the sight of Julie, safe and content, and everything else – the doctors, the discomfort, the uncertainty about the future – seems just a little less daunting.

 

(56)

Agent Park, when he arrives that evening, is understandably not thrilled. “The State Department…” he begins, faltering. “There are protocols…”

“You can find a way around those protocols,” says Steve shrewdly.

Natasha crosses her arms. Despite Steve and Hill’s assurances that Park was not on Roeske’s team, she still finds it difficult to trust the man. Not for the same reason as Hill – Natasha doesn’t particularly trust Fury, either – but because no matter what he says about his reasons for joining Internal Affairs, no matter how sincere he seemed in his desire to destroy the Volgograd drive, his star rises and falls at the whims of the Council.

They stand in an office down the hall from Clint’s room, abandoned by its occupant for this purpose. Park, Steve, Natasha… and Julie, who had trailed after them as though she’d been invited along, who had been admitted in because they weren’t sure what they could possibly do to stop her, short of handcuffs. And according to what Clint’s told them, even that might not be enough.

Park hesitates, looking down at the girl. “Your parents’ will left you to the care of your Aunt Grace in Highworth,” he says, trying to sound gentle and sympathetic but just coming off as aggrieved.

“I’ve never met my Aunt Grace, and I’ve never been to Highworth,” says Julie promptly. _And I plan on keeping it that way, too_ , says her tone.

Her reaction to the confirmation of her parents’ death had been… well, nothing. Calm acceptance, maybe. Maybe even a touch of _well, of course, how stupid do you think I am_? Both were unnerving in so young a child… even to Natasha, who has had plenty of experience with unusual girls.

In many ways, Julie is like those girls, the Katerinas and Yelenas – and Anyas – that came and went in the dead of night, who were unnamed and unmade and remade and broken with such grim, calculated, efficient brutality. It makes a sick kind of sense that Christopher Artemiev and his colleagues have not lost their touch, their knack of finding those children brilliant enough to be dangerous and vulnerable enough to be tamed. Even after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Red Room’s dissolution and disavowal, and her own actions in Volgograd five years ago, these girls are still targets.

Park scowls and looks between Steve and Natasha. The former is here because he is the Avengers’ nominal representative to SHIELD, and the latter… well, if she’s representing anyone, it’s Clint. Which is insane, because the idea of him taking responsibility for a child – much less _this_ child – is… well, she hasn’t quite wrapped her mind around it. But she’s here, nevertheless, because she loves him, and he still loves her, which is more insane than anything. And because his words feel caught in her heart, lodged in the tissue, digging in with every beat: _It was like when I found her, I found you, too._

When she looks at Julie, she doesn’t see herself. Her reflection has changed too often, and too often it shows her things she doesn’t want to see. But maybe, some day, this girl will be who Natalia Romanova could have been. If someone had been there. If someone had cared.

Park twitches. No doubt he’s mentally reviewing Clint’s file, and all the reasons why this is probably a bad idea. “I can’t possibly just leave her with…”

“Yes, you can,” says Natasha, because as uneven as parts of that file may be, there’s no denying that, as Avengers, they have their share of resources. A lot of those resources, unfortunately, are directly tied to Stark’s bank account. But there’s also something to be said for public goodwill. It’s not political capital, exactly, but it might do in a pinch.

“Besides,” says Julie, “if you do try and drag me off to Highworth, I won’t tell you.”

Park blinks. “Won’t tell me what?”

Julie glances at Natasha and crosses her arms, all green polka-dots and gray-eyed defiance. “The name and address of Artemiev’s accomplice. The woman who kidnapped me.”

 _The woman who probably killed your parents, and burned down your house, and destroyed your life,_ Natasha thinks. She looks sideways at Steve. He knows, from what Clint told them, that Julie saw Artemiev _shoot_ his accomplice, a woman who called herself Elizabeth and styled herself a Catholic nun.

Fortunately, Park was not around for that conversation, and Steve is smart enough to keep quiet.

*

When they return to Clint’s room, they find that the rest of the peanut gallery has arrived. Bruce is wearing another borrowed scrub top– this one has an orange and yellow flower motif – and a weary expression. Stark is engaged in a rather ferocious game of War with Jane Foster, using Natasha’s deck of cards, and Thor… well, Thor has discovered Jell-O.

“Truly,” says the Asgardian to no one in particular, not batting an eye at the room full of sophisticated medical equipment, fixated on a quivering spork-ful of red gelatin. “We have nothing like this at home.”

Clint sits up eagerly as they enter, then winces and puts a hand to his bandaged side. He looks at Julie, then Steve, then Natasha. “Well?”

Julie climbs back into her chair, looking curiously between Banner, Foster and Thor. Natasha can only assume, by their presence, that the Great Space Louse Infestation has been well and truly dealt with. “It’s only temporary…” she begins.

Clint sits back, relieved and happy. Steve picks up the narrative with considerably more enthusiasm – he seems to like the kid, even after she gave him the slip in the cafeteria – and Natasha tries to ignore the leaden sensation in her stomach. She wants to smile, wants to join in the chorus of congratulations, but her own emotions are decidedly mixed. No sooner does it seem that things might be going right for her and Clint – or at least well – but another complication rears its ugly head.

Guiltily, she looks down at Julie. The girl is using some pilfered sheet of paper – maybe something from Clint’s medical chart – to fold into an assortment of triangles and squares. It isn’t her fault. She might have become another Anya – another Natalia – and now she’s here instead, hard-headed and enormously resilient.

_And when Clint sees her, he sees me._

The funny thing is, she sees him in the girl, too. She sees the orphan who, even with a brother by his side, felt so abandoned by society that running away and joining the circus seemed like a viable option. She sees the boy who, through sheer resolve, became a great marksman and soldier and agent.

And he’s right. The girl needs protection. There are others out there who idolize the former glory of the Red Room, and those sufficiently impressed with Christopher Artemiev’s reputation to take action based on his stamp of approval. Julie Banks is different… uncanny, at times, in her cleverness and her poise. And there are those who would exploit that, and destroy her, in the blink of an eye.

She needs help. It seems that they can’t possibly be the right people to do it. But who else is there?

A nurse walks in, a man with a long nose and a prematurely-receding hairline. He looks up from a chart as he enters and stops short. “It’s after visiting hours,” he says. “I’m sorry, but are you all family?”

 

(57)

“Chelsea?” says Clint doubtfully. “I couldn’t afford the rent on a cardboard box in Chelsea, much less an apartment.”

“Just go and check it out,” says Stark blithely. “I know the listing agent. We might be able to work something out.”

Clint frowns, even though Stark can’t see it over the audio-only line. “You are _not_ going to foot the bill for this one,” he says sternly. He still has a little pride left, after all, and money that he saved up during his time with SHIELD. Not a lot, but maybe enough to get started.

“Oh, you don’t need to tell me,” says Stark. “My generosity goes completely unappreciated with you two.”

Clint doesn’t tell Stark that Natasha isn’t with him. Being that it’s Stark, he probably already knows, but Clint isn’t excited about having that particular conversation with anyone.

Is she trying to give him space? Is she freaked out – or turned off – that he’s got an overly-precocious second-grader in tow? He’s thought about calling her, even keyed in the first few digits of her number, but he can’t quite go through with it. They managed to give each other time after New York, and again after Mill Valley. Maybe this is just what they need. Maybe he just needs to trust that she’ll come back.

“I’ll check it out,” he tells Stark. “No promises.”

*

He’d known right away that they couldn’t live at the Tower. Five-star amenities aside, it was basically just a giant billboard, an advertisement to all supervillian-kind: The _Avengers are here! Come and get ‘em!_ Clint has spent enough time doing the cloak-and-dagger thing that the whole situation rankles, but it’s more than that. It hardly seems responsible to set the girl up in a building that might as well have a target painted on its side, and it sure wouldn’t be conducive to any kind of normal life. The second the reporters and the bloggers and the fangirls see her in the company of any Avenger, even the lowliest, is the second that any kind of anonymity Julie still has goes up in smoke. And considering how many loose ends have yet to be tied up, that’s just not acceptable.

So he’d started looking for a place on the island, somewhere reasonably close to the Tower – in case of emergency – without actually being included in the bulls-eye. But even after what’s being called _the Battle of New York_ , people still want to live in Manhattan, and rents are… well, astronomical wasn’t too strong a term. Ironic, given that the island recently had an enormous space portal parked overhead, but still apt.

There’s no way Clint can afford a place in Chelsea, that’s for sure, but he decides to follow Stark’s lead: to get him off his back… and because he wants to show Julie that her new life might involve something better than broken-down former warehouses and creepy tenements.

She hasn’t changed much in the past week. No outbursts, other than the occasional rude comment he’s come to expect. No tantrums. No apparent bouts of homesickness. He knows that she must be feeling _something_ , she’s just not expressing it. Right?

*

When they arrive at the address, Clint almost keeps driving, Stark or no Stark. It’s a top-floor loft in a six-story brick-faced unit, across the street from a sprawling public park, up the street from a private school. He’s surprised that there isn’t blood in the streets from all the Manhattanites crawling over each other to snap up the place. But Julie looks out the window, interested, so he sighs and looks for a place to park the car.

*

Private key-locked elevator. Hardwood floors. Covered balcony. A stainless-steel kitchen. A Creston security system. Swanky furnishings. A home gym. Clint’s broken into places nicer than this, but he’s certainly never lived in any of them.

He feels like an intruder now, wandering the well-appointed rooms in Julie’s wake, despite the fact that the front door was left ajar, the realtor’s literature prominently displayed on the mahogany coffee table. Clint doesn’t bother grabbing a flyer. He figures the HOA dues alone are more than he used to pull per month as a SHIELD agent.

Julie emerges from the second bedroom. She’s not smiling, but her eyes have lost some of the sharp, hunted look he’s become so used to seeing. Their eyes meet, and before he can explain that this is a huge mistake she twitches her thin shoulders in a shrug and says, “It’s different than… than I’m used to. But it’s nice.”

A woman in a coral-pink suit, with light brown skin and dark hair, walks through the front door. She doesn’t seem surprised to see Clint. “Oh, I’m sorry… I had to take a call,” she says, holding up her cell phone, which matches her suit. “In this market we’re used to things happening quickly, but…” she shakes her head as though amazed, smiling brightly. “My name is Rhonda Emerson. How do you like the place?”

“Uh…”

“It’s pretty awesome,” says Julie, trying out her American accent. She completely oversells the perkiness, but the realtor doesn’t seem to notice.

Rhonda just beams. “It is, isn’t it?” She takes them on a tour, pointing out features and amenities and generally making Clint feel even more like an idiot for setting foot in the neighborhood. _Listen, Ms. Emerson, what’s the cardboard box market like?_ Otherwise, they’re going to have to return to the Tower until he can figure out something, or swallow his pride and accept Stark’s help.

It’s stupid, because he doesn’t have a problem flying in the Avengers’ Quinjet, or using the new weapons tech, without feeling like he has to pay his own way. But this is different. This is a responsibility he’s taken on outside of the Avengers, independent of the other guys. He’d wanted the job. He’d argued for it. And now that he has it, he’s realizing what everyone else already knew.

_Jesus, Clint, you can’t even keep a houseplant alive._

“…move ahead, if you’re happy with it?”

“Yeah… what?” He’s missed something. Something important, probably.

But Rhonda just smiles some more. It’s a big-commission smile, he realizes. “I’ll just give the bank a call back and we’ll get the ball rolling.”

She gives Julie a sprightly little wave and steps back out into the hallway, presumably so she can make an ecstatic phone call in relative privacy. Clint stares after for a moment – Julie watches him with interest – and gropes for his own phone. His face feels hot. “I distinctly remember telling Stark not to buy a…”

“He didn’t.”

Clint turns, reaching back for the handgun holstered beneath his jacket, putting himself between Julie and the doorway. A man stands there – his hands empty, held palms-up at his sides – dressed in a dove-gray suit. He’s in his late forties, and tall, with sandy brown hair graying faintly at the temples.

“Agent Bernhardt,” says Julie, peering around Clint. The fed barely glances at her, silently shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Clint knows the name. He knows that the agent had arrived at the facility in Havasu not long after Stark and Thor, claiming to be looking for Fisher. He knows that the man later appeared in Vegas, actually beating Natasha and Stark to his storage unit, and that he was involved in the takedown of Roeske and his men. But after that, according to Natasha, he’d faded back into the woodwork, making no attempt to contact any of them after they’d departed for the SHIELD hospital.

And maybe, in the back of his mind, Clint had at least _suspected_ the truth. But it was the kind of suspicion that could never be put into words – could barely be formulated as a thought – because of its sheer, ludicrous impossibility.

“I think your realtor’s going to be a while,” says the other man. He swallows, pulling at the cuffs of his suit jacket as though it chafes. “Is there someplace we could talk?”

*

They end up on the balcony. It runs the length of the loft, accessible through the living room as well as the master bedroom. Clint stands in a corner, where he can see both entrances… and where, through the nearest sliding glass door, he can monitor Julie. At the moment, she’s sitting cross-legged on a rug in the bedroom, looking through a book… or pretending to. The kid can probably read lips, ala Hal in _2001: A Space Odyssey_ , and he makes a mental note to take care what he says.

The man calling himself Bernhardt leans against the railing, looking out over the city. From this vantage they can see the tops of the trees in the nearby park, and the rooftops of other buildings. The air, cool and crisp with the promise of winter, feels good against Clint’s skin as he breaks the silence with a question. “Are you actually an FBI agent?”

Barney looks at him sideways, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. “I really am. Does that surprise you?”

“That’s a stupid question,” says Clint bluntly. His chest feels tight; his hands feel empty. “I’m surprised that you’re here. That we’re having this conversation. That you’re _alive_.” He crosses his arms, struggles briefly with the truth, and finally concedes to it. “I looked for you. In the Army.”

His brother’s gaze skitters away, towards streets and trees and distant rooftops. Does he enjoy the height the way Clint does – the freedom of it, the sense of being above the fray, separate from the mess – or is he only thinking about the horror of a fall? “I would have been gone by the time you got there. Didn’t last long. I thought it was what I wanted. Orders. Someone telling me what to do. Truth was, I couldn’t look at any of my commanding officers without seeing old Harold.” He laughs hollowly. “I was a mess.”

Clint raises his brows. “So, naturally, the FBI was happy to have you.”

“Well, that was twenty years ago,” says Barney somberly. “I was on my own after I was discharged. Spent a while… soul-searching, I guess you could say, although at the time I just thought I was trying to stay alive.” He rests his forearms on the railing, clasping his hands together. With his head slightly bowed, he almost looks like a man at prayer. “I made some friends. They helped me get a fresh start. A new name. A new life, really. Barney Barton was a mess… Charles Bernhardt is someone different. Someone better.”

“That’s nice,” says Clint flatly. Through everything that’s happened to him since Carson’s, he’d never seriously thought about taking on a new name. Aliases, sure. Stage names and code names, obviously. But he could never really be anyone other than Clint Barton, because for so long that name was the only halfway decent thing he owned.

“But it didn’t matter what I called myself… not a day went by,” continues Barney, low-voiced, eyes on the street below, “that I didn’t hate myself for what I’d done. I’m sorry, Clint.”

It still hurts to think about, the way an old wound aches when it rains. _The bus pulls away from the curb, belching fumes into the street. Clint stands there, one hand holding his bow, the other waving frantically over his head. But his big brother never looks back, and then the bus turns a corner, and he’s gone._

It doesn’t make the pain any less, to know that it’s shared. It doesn’t take the sting out of the memory, and if Barney had made this apology twenty years ago, Clint wouldn’t have though twice about pitching him over the balcony. But the sting isn’t there anymore, not the way it used to be. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but it does scab over worst of them.

Through the glass, he sees Julie look up from her book. He has no idea what she’s reading. Something left behind by the previous owners, or a piece of set decoration used by the stagers. He doesn’t like that she’s by herself in there, out of reach, even though he locked the front door of the loft, and he’s already planned out what he’ll do at the first hint of a threat. Is this how parents feel all the time? Well, not all parents. Not Harold. But Mom… had she watched her sons with this fear in her heart, this suspicion of what the world might do to them?

“How’d you find me?” he asks.

“Eve.” Barney says the name with obvious warmth, turning from the railing for the first time. “My wife. I was working during the attack in New York.” He holds his hands out away from his body, gesturing to the suit. “This isn’t my normal look. I spend a lot of time in LA, some of it undercover. But Eve and I, we still send emails, texts, back and forth. That day, the day New York happened, I was in the field. Everyone was talking about what was happening, but I didn’t want to watch. Couldn’t believe it was true. Didn’t want the distraction anyway. And then that night I get a message on my phone. Eve. She says, _didn’t you tell me your brother was an archer?_ ”

Clint scratches the back of his neck, trying to reconcile old memories of his brother – big, rough, hopeless with the ladies – with the knowledge that he’s got a sister-in-law. “So… she knows? About you?”

“Yeah. I told her everything. She knew me before, anyway; she was a counselor at a… at a place I used to stay. But before we got married, I came totally clean,” he says, reaching into his jacket pocket. Clint tenses – and hates himself for doing it – but Barney only brings out his cell phone. He swipes at the screen and turns it towards Clint, so that he can see the image of an attractive woman with shiny, dark hair and a bright smile. There are two other faces in the picture: a boy and a girl, both younger than Julie, with their mother’s hair at their father’s hazel eyes.

“That’s Myra and Andrew,” says Barney.

Somewhere on that phone, thinks Clint numbly, is a picture of a golden retriever and a minivan and probably a Goddamn white picket fence. He tries to work up some anger over that, searching for the sense of being wronged by the fact that his brother has been living the American dream while Clint dealt with the burned bodies of children and Central American drug lords and fascist alien overlords with mind-controlling staffs. But those three faces smile up at him, frozen in a moment of joy, and the only thing Clint feels is… sad.

He doesn’t have any pictures of Natasha like that. He’s never seen his own eyes looking at him from a child’s face. Probably never will, because that’s not the life he chose. He’s made his peace with that. Or he thought he had, until now. Suddenly he’s wondering if his insistence on looking after Julie was some weird reverse midlife crisis, driven by a desire to ‘settle down’ and make a family, any kind of family, before the otherwise-inevitable happened and he ended up dead.

Barney puts his phone away, looking discomforted and perhaps a little sulky at Clint’s lack of appreciation for his offspring. “I have friends higher up in the Bureau,” he says; Clint assumes he’s still bragging, but no, he’s continuing his explanation. “After New York, it turned out that a number of them actually worked for SHIELD. I knew you were alive because of that stunt in Central Park, but I didn’t know… I didn’t know if I should try to find you. If you’d even want to see me. And I hated the thought of walking into that building in Manhattan like a kid looking for an autograph. Then… that night, a couple weeks ago, one of my colleagues calls, says there’s reports the Avengers are in New Mexico. Just a few hours away by air, and Eve says, if you do manage to catch up with them, then it was meant to be. If not, it wasn’t the right time.”

He thrusts his hands into his pockets and paces a few feet away, a few feet back. Clint holds his tongue. Through the glass, Julie watches both of them openly, the book lying forgotten on the rug.

“Of course,” continues Barney, “by the time I landed in Albuquerque, it was the middle of the night and you were in the hospital. I showed up the next morning – hat in hand, so to speak – but they told me you’d self-discharged. And so I spent the next couple of days chasing you and your friends across the Southwest, using Bureau resources, my contacts… whatever I could think of. Seemed like I was always a step behind.”

“I heard you beat Natasha and Stark to the self-storage.” Clint doesn’t intend to say it, only think it, but the words come out of their own volition.

Barney smiles wryly. “Found the place by going through camera footage of the night before. Probably the same way that asshole Roeske knew where to go. I’ll tell you, a couple of times that day, I thought your girlfriend was going to shoot me.”

The label _girlfriend_ is not idly applied; it’s a transparent bid for information on who Natasha is, and Clint ignores it. Maybe one day he’ll feel comfortable talking to his big brother about his girl problems, but today is not that day, and tomorrow doesn’t look good either. “Occupational hazard, I’d think,” he says lightly.

The dangled hook having come up empty, Barney chuckles weakly and pushes on. “Next thing I know, she’s bandaging you up, the Norse guy shows up with one of Roeske’s crew in tow, and you’re all hospital-bound – _again_ – with the girl.” He glances at Julie. “And she’s kind of the reason I’m here.”

“Fisher’s money.”

“Almost ten million. A lot of it from Roeske, as a pre-payment for her services. He had some hacker kids trying to get it back for him, after it all went to hell, but one of them squealed. The account’s impounded now… although it might be a couple million dollars lighter.”

Clint crosses his arms. “That doesn’t sound like something Charles Bernhardt would do,” he says shrewdly.

“Well, maybe it’s my Barton blood showing. The money’s supposed to be earmarked for Fisher and Witten’s surviving victims anyway, but you know how it is: by the time the bureaucrats get done, half of it will have been spent on _processing fees_ and half the survivors will have died of old age. So Stark helped me set up an account, with you as custodian, until she’s old enough to manage it herself.” He rubs a hand against the balcony railing. “Real estate’s always a good investment.”

Clint tries to imagine waking up in this bedroom, making breakfast in this kitchen, taking Julie to the school down the street. It all feels strange, like a glove he’s yet to break in, like scenes from another person’s life. “Thanks,” he says woodenly; the gratitude is genuine, but it’s hard to express it in a way that doesn’t sound forced. _Thanks for looking after me – took you long enough. Thanks for taking care of her – when you never took care of me. Thanks for doing this – now shouldn’t you get back to your perfect life?_

Barney watches him, chewing silently on the inside of his cheek. It’s a startlingly familiar habit, one he didn’t break when he became Charles Bernhardt. “Maybe someday… someday I’d like you to meet them. Eve and Myra and Andy. And I’d like them to meet you.”

Inside, Julie is carefully ripping the pages out of her erstwhile reading material. Maybe she’s absorbed the fact that the loft will soon be hers, and feels ownership towards anything within its walls. Then again, maybe she doesn’t care: she’d folded his medical chart into a tiny paper frog the second the doctor’s back was turned.

He runs the images through his mind again – waking, breakfast, walking to school – but this time he dares to include Natasha. It’s still strange – stranger, even – but it gives him the same aching feeling he experienced looking at the picture of Barney’s wife and kids. He imagines it… the domesticity he’s seen in the movies but never really experienced – never expected to experience – only different because of who he is and who Nat is and who Julie is: all of them odd and abandoned and broken and together.

“I’d like that, too,” he says.

*

He takes an ‘official’ leave of absence from the Avengers. The guys make light of it. Stark says, “If we need someone shot with an arrow, we know where to find you,” but – surprisingly – they respect his time and his wishes.

Repetition turns the unimaginably strange into the routine. It’s always been that way: when he joined up with Carson’s, when he started with SHIELD, when he accepted there were aliens and monsters and super-soldiers at large on the planet. Human beings are adaptable like that. Given time, anything can start to seem… normal.

They move into the loft. He enrolls Julie in school. All of their paperwork says that they’re Frank and Juliette Bernhardt, but it’s not the names themselves that matter as much as the relationship they imply.

*

Julie goes to bed every night with her headphones on. She listens to novels, history, science, poetry, and tells him about what she’s learned the following morning. She’s frequently, fantastically creepy, although he’s careful never to use that word.

She doesn’t cry over her dead parents or her lost life. She doesn’t have nightmares about dark cells and scarred men… at least, not that she’ll admit too. But Clint’s learned to recognize origami-making as an attempt at calm and focus, like meditation. It is during these silent sessions that she seems the most intense and the most distant.

A day will come when she’ll be ready to go back to England. She’ll need to see their graves, the same way he used to need to walk by the butcher’s shop in Waverly, just to make sure that it was still closed. Some day… but not yet.

*

With Stark’s help, they upgrade the loft’s security. Steve uses SHIELD to run background checks on all of the building’s other residents, as well as the buildings on either side. Banner is conscripted to help move in new furniture; thankfully, the Other Guy is never needed. Thor and Jane take Julie shoe shopping. They compare notes on Pop-Tarts and Jell-O. Weird. Unimaginably strange. Normal.

*

One night, about a week before Christmas, Clint walks into the bedroom and finds Natasha standing on the balcony. He closes his eyes, counts silently, and opens them again. She’s still there. Her breath steams into the air, and the angles of her body radiate tension.

Before he can think about it – before he can succumb to the impulse to grin like an idiot – he joins her outside. The cold bites through his clothes with sharp little teeth. They’re predicting snow in the next couple of days.

“I couldn’t find him.” She’s wearing her combat suit, what he’s come to think of as her uniform. It’s insulated, but a normal person would be shivering. Natasha, of course, always seems impervious to the cold.

Clint doesn’t want to talk about who she could or couldn’t find. He doesn’t want to talk at all; he wants to put his arms around her, to kiss her until they’ve generated enough warmth to create a high-pressure front. He wants to peel off her uniform, inch by tantalizing inch, to taste every bit of uncovered flesh until she’s begging for him… With an effort, he throttles his baser impulses. “You went looking for Artemiev?”

She nods. Her arms are crossed beneath her breasts, and her eyes are haunted. “The son of a bitch has gone off the grid. He got out of the country before anyone started looking for him… took a commercial flight to Minsk and just _disappeared_ … I’m sorry…”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

“I should be able to do _this_ …”

“Nat.”

“It’s the only thing I-”

He kisses her. His fingertips graze above the suit’s high collar, imagining the bright shine of the zipper, the subtle scrape of metal fastenings, and he can feel her heartbeat fluttering there, hummingbird-quick. Now she does shiver, not against the cold but into his touch; her arms slowly unfold, wrapping around his waist, her mouth opening under his. The months of missing her are folded up into this kiss, and the weeks of heartache and anger before that.

 _The motel in Ashmore: the soft snap of playing cards against the other bed, his temples pounding with every beat of his heart, his mind choked with grief and resentment and Fisher’s latest mind-altering cocktail. And then she’s standing there, looking down at him like she owns him. The fact is… she does. He’s hers, body and soul, whether she wants him or not._ _He has no say in the matter, and they both know it. Even if it seems like he does, it’s only because she lets him. So he holds her wrists hard enough to bruise. He marks her skin with his teeth. He pushes her face-down on the bed, waiting for her to push back, waiting for her to protest, because at least then she will be reacting to him, at least she’ll be feeling some of his pain, but she only gasps in need, arcing her body against his as far as he’ll allow, until he can’t remember what he’s doing or why or even who she is anymore…_

He breaks the kiss as abruptly as he began it. The heat he imagined is siphoned into the atmosphere; the cold is in his marrow now, and he half-expects her long lashes to be frosted with ice. He looks down at her, reveling in the solid familiarity of her features, wrestling with his love and his lust and his guilt. “I hurt you.”

The lashes flutter. She leans into his body, warm and strong, gaze drifting to a point somewhere over his shoulder. “We’re going to do that, you know,” she says grimly. “We’re going to hurt each other.” Her grip on his waist tightens as she meets his eyes again. “But I’m not afraid of you.”

*

His bedroom, compared to the balcony, seems almost stiflingly warm.

Clint pulls off his shirt as he checks the Creston panel by the door. The system’s still armed, with no movement detected in the rest of the apartment. When he turns around, Natasha’s toeing off the last leg of her suit. Her bra and panties are black, simple and unadorned. His mouth waters, even as he complains, “I wanted to do that.”

“You’ll have other chances,” she tells him.

*

He kneels between her legs and pulls her into his lap, drinks in the sight of her body spread out before him, lithe and lean and exquisite. Her eyes are dark, her cheeks and chest flushed with passion, but at the same time her demeanor is curiously calm. So is his. This isn’t like the last time in Germany, a frantic, desperate coupling before they returned to the vestiges of their old lives. This is the first night in a long line of nights they will share together. They both know it, and her smile flashes as she pulls herself up, wrapping her arms around his neck, finding a rhythm, a new rhythm, one that is slow and deep and drives him out of his mind.

They are mindful of the presence of a child just down the hall; despite her penchant for wearing headphones to bed, it still makes the entire experience… different. Not bad. He’s enjoyed making Natasha scream and curse before. Now he enjoys watching her swallow those screams, and the curses are even more delicious when they’re whispered into his skin.

*

Clint wakes to the side of Natasha’s back, to the pale skin marked with fine, silvery scars, to the angles of her shoulder blades and the gentle curve of her spine. She sits on the edge of the bed, holding her bra in her hands.

Drowsily, he reaches for her. She takes a breath when his fingers brush against her side, settling on the swell of her hip. “Where are you going?” he asks.

She turns her head, enough that he can make out her profile, not enough to truly see her face. “It’s okay. I just thought… it’ll be morning in a few hours…”

“Are you going to turn into a pumpkin? No, wait, that was midnight…”

She ignores his ramblings. “I thought it would be awkward, that’s all.”

“What, breakfast?”

Exasperated, she turns away again. “I just don’t know what to say to her.”

Clint is silent for a moment. He keeps his hand against her back, needing that warmth, that connection. “Is that why you went after Artemiev? Because of Julie?”

“Why else?”

“You told me a long time ago that you wanted to kill him.”

“I’ve wanted to kill plenty of people,” she says, a little sullenly. “But it seemed like the best way I could help you take care of her.”

Now it’s his turn to be annoyed. “You can help by being here. By being a part of her life.”

“Why would she want that? I don’t even know why _you_ want that.”

He pushes himself upright. “Because you’re a part of my life. Because I can’t do this by myself. Because I love you, and no alien or mad scientist or Tony-Goddamn-Stark is ever going to change that.”

There’s a moment, a long, silent moment during which he wonders if he’s said enough, or too much, or the right words in the wrong order, and then she lets her bra fall from her hands. He pulls back the sheets and she slides back in next to him. They touch, they kiss, but she is still quiet, still pensive, and finally she says, “I’m going to screw this up.”

“We’re going to do that,” Clint tells you. “We’re going to screw things up. But then we’ll fix them. And we’ll do it together.”


	15. Epilogue

** EPILOGUE **

_Who then devised the torment? Love._   
_Love is the unfamiliar Name_   
_Behind the hands that wove_   
_The intolerable shirt of flame_   
_Which human power cannot remove._   
_We only live, only suspire_   
_Consumed by either fire or fire._

_\- T.S. Eliot_

 

(After)

Shivali knows that the _kemal ki sebhaa_ is in need of money. The Lotus House – its second iteration, reincarnated nearly twenty years ago – spent its first decade flush with cash. The building was renovated, with living quarters and classrooms for both boys and girls. Technology was brought in, and music, and art.

But the past five years have been difficult. The seed money that _śikṣaka_ – the Teacher – brought with her to India has been exhausted filling the minds and the bellies of the young people of Jayanagar… or at least those fortunate enough to be lifted out of poverty.

They are always eager to receive potential investors, who are – for the most part – humanitarians who wish to do good, and politicians who wish to be seen doing good. They tour the facilities, they speak to the children, and, if luck is with them, they retreat to _śikṣaka’s_ office and execute a funds exchange.

But _śikṣaka_ has been closeted with their newest investor for some time, and Shivali is uneasy. The man, a foreigner, was quite old. He seemed gentile, charming, harmless. But something about the slow blink of age-pebbled eyelids over bright green eyes set Shivali on edge. Something about the way he watched the children made her think that his money might be cursed.

She stands close to the Teacher’s door, listening. The Teacher’s words are too softly-spoken to perceived, but sometimes the man’s voice can be heard. _Partnership_ , he says, and _Volgograd_ and _another copy_ and _work together_. She also hears the word _fisher_ , spoken in a self-satisfied tone, almost like a warning.

Indira and Vinay pass by, looking at Shivali with disapproval, but they say nothing. They may be her elders, senior among those who teach, but they also know she has _the_ Teacher’s favor as one of the first graduates of the new Lotus House. She has known the Teacher longer than almost anyone.

The voices fall silent. Shivali clenches her fists so tightly that her nails bite into her palms like sharp little teeth. _Please, śikṣaka. Be wise. Do not make deals with Yama, for he has a thousand hells to punish those who think to challenge him_.

After a time, Shivali hears footsteps. The door opens, and there is the Teacher. Her straight, dark hair is smooth and unruffled, but her eyes are troubled. When she sees Shivali, she appears to pause, to recenter herself, and her voice is as calm as a pond on a windless day. “Shivali. I can trust you, can’t I?”

“Yes, _śikṣaka_.” She says the words reverently, as always, but inside she trembles with doubt. This must have something to do with the green-eyed man.

“I need you to go outside, Shivali. Find our visitor’s car, and bring it around to the rear entrance.”

She holds out her hand, and Shivali takes what is offered. A key. “Yes, _śikṣaka_ ,” she says, although her stomach turns. Moving the man’s car off the street must mean that he is staying. She begins to turn away.

“Shivali.”

“Yes, _śikṣaka_?”

The Teacher hesitates. Her tranquility trembles, like a ripple across the water’s surface. Then she smiles. She is as lovely as Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and beauty, when she smiles. “When you come back… bring a shovel.”

 

(After)

“Your three o’clock is here, Director.”

“Hawkeye?”

Agent Harrington’s lips twist in a badly-suppressed smile. “Yeah, that’s the one,” he says, rather too familiarly, and Maria blanks the screen.

Many things have changed in the past twenty years. Her title. Her office. Her last name, even, although only the most foolish junior agents presume to call her anything but _Director Hill_.

The threats have changed. The tech has changed. But one thing always seems to stay the same: there’s always a Hawkeye around to make her life difficult.

The door opens, and Maria’s three o’clock appointment walks in. She stands at something approaching attention, eyes fixed on the back wall. “You wanted to see me, Director?”

 _Oh, she’s nervous. That’s precious_. “Take a seat, Agent Barton.”

Warily, the girl accedes. Her quiver clinks against the armrest; she insists on carrying physical arrows, even though her new bow will fire an almost limitless quantity of energy bolts. “You never know when a pointy stick will come in handy,” she’d once remarked.

“I’ve been looking over the reports from your first few missions,” Maria says neutrally, brushing her hand across the surface of her Smart Desk. Text and images float by… a smoking crater here, a fireball there. Not clean. Not careful. And yet the remarks by her SO are equally as telling: _shows courage and initiative… almost inhuman aim… refused to leave the civilians in harm’s way…_ “At this point in your trial period, I’d say your reviews are… mixed.”

Sasha’s expression darkens. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do.”

“Exactly. I know – we all know – that you’re on your best behavior. For now. But what happens when we send you out solo, or deep cover?” _Initiative_ can be a euphemism for _unpredictability_ , after all.

Sasha holds her scowl for a moment longer, but then, unexpectedly, she smiles. “What, do you think I’m going to take my cues from Julie? What she did to Artemiev… that still sticks in your craw, doesn’t it?”

 _Not my craw, Maria thinks, and not Council Member Park’s_. But there are other voices on that Council, and other ears listening to this conversation, and she had a part to play. “Christopher Artemiev could have been a valuable resource.”

“He’d been out of the game for a long time. He was worthless.”

“He was unarmed. Executed.”

“Quickly. Painlessly. It was a lot better than he deserved.”

“So if we send you on a mission, and you decide the asset deserves to die?”

Sasha’s eyes narrow. She has her mother’s fine features, but the eyes… those are all Barton. “Julie isn’t a SHIELD agent. If that’s what I am, I’ll follow orders. Of course.”

There’s no _of course_ when it comes to anyone code-named Hawkeye, but Maria doesn’t intend to get into that conversation within the range of electronic ears. Later, at the Mansion… well, then it’ll be safe. The only AI listening in will be JARVIS, and he knows all of their dirty laundry already. “I’m glad to hear it. You’re dismissed.”

 

(Now)

_I am Julie Banks, Juliette Bernhardt, Jules, and this is my life so far._

_*_

_I went to school at a private academy up the street from our apartment, not because the public schools were educationally inferior but because they didn’t provide top-level security. I sat in classrooms next to the children of foreign diplomats and minor celebrities, and my status as a nobody by comparison made me as odd as the son of that famous actor or the step-daughter of that notorious lawyer._

_That was the whole point of me going to school, of course. I didn’t need the academic instruction, but I did lack in certain social graces. I had to learn how to fit in with the crowd without being swept up by it, how to present emotion even when I didn’t particularly feel it, how to be a peer to children even though I already felt ten times their age._

_I worked hard to lose my accent, to learn new accents, to learn new languages. I listened to the Russian students talking in the hallways, and the mutterings of the German tutor when he thought no one was listening. I listened to audio books at night and let what I learned percolate through me during my waking hours. I had private self-defense lessons in the academy’s gym. And I thought about how dangerous I might have become, if others’ plans for me had come to fruition._

_And the man who had opened a locked door into a dark and smoke-filled corridor, who had carried me through broken glass, the-Avenger-with-the-bow-and-arrows, Clint, became Dad. It was a conscious decision on my part, deliberate and, if I’m completely honest, manipulative. I was afraid of becoming a burden, a job to be passed off to someone he felt was better suited for it. I wanted to bind myself to my best and most stalwart protector. So for a long time I said the words without feeling them… or only feeling them from a distance, as though this girl called Juliette Bernhardt was a character in a book I was reading about._

_And then at some point I realized that the words were true, and had been for a long time._

_*_

_I didn’t go back to England until I was eleven. It was Dad’s idea, although I could tell he didn’t think I was ready. In retrospect, maybe he was the one who wasn’t ready. But we went, and I saw my parents’ graves, and the sadness I had expected to come crashing down on me remained suspended._

_That was the hardest part – not standing above the bodies of the people who had given me life, but realizing that I still had no emotional connection to their deaths. And that in itself, the sheer narcissism of it, scared me more than anything._

_Then came the day, a few weeks later, when Natasha picked me up from school. She was living in the loft with us, of course, but we still managed to not have a great deal to do with each other. We were impersonal roommates, nothing more. I thought that maybe she resented me, that she felt I was a rival for Dad’s affections, and her presence always put me on edge. To be frank, I made a lot more origami when Natasha was around._

_But that day she told me that Dad had gone somewhere with Thor and Steve and Bruce – Howie had just been born, so Tony was sitting this one out – and the way she said somewhere told me it was elsewhere. He had left that morning and was only supposed to be gone a few hours and he wasn’t back yet. It was probably nothing, she’d said, as though travel between planets and dimensions or whatever it might be was no big deal, but I saw the fear behind her eyes, and it made me afraid too._

_That night, I couldn’t sleep. Insomnia bled into frustration and frustration became terror and suddenly there were tears running down my cheeks and a deep, hot, burning pain in my throat as I tried to stay silent. I cried silently for the loss of my birth parents and the life I ought to have had as their daughter, the life that had been stolen because of human greed and cruelty. I cried because I realized that I couldn’t remember what their voices sounded like, and that the image of their faces in my mind had become vague and indistinct. And I cried in fear that I was going to lose a parent again._

_I didn’t make a sound – I’m sure of it – but after a few minutes of this Natasha came into the room. She sat on the foot of my bed and looked out the window. She didn’t try to say anything comforting. She didn’t try to hold me or stroke my hair or anything like that. But it was as though her presence, as unwelcome as I first thought it, untied a knot in my chest, unlocked a door for which I’d never even had a key. I pressed my face into my pillow and cried, loudly and messily and without reserve, until the pillowcase was damp and my eyes were hot and my breath came in strange, hiccupping gasps. Only then did Natasha speak, her words seeming to answer a question I had never dared to ask aloud. “When I look at you I see myself. And it scares me.”_

_I sniffled rather miserably. “Why?”_

_“Because I don’t want you to end up like me. But it’s all I know. I can’t teach you what I don’t know.”_

_I pulled the blankets up over my shoulder, turning towards the window. “I don’t need another teacher,” I told her. I didn’t say what I did need, but she knew. She knew it, all right._

_*_

_Things happened pretty quickly after that, although I’m not foolish enough to think that had anything to do with me. It had a lot more to do with Dad and the others returning from Elsewhere about five days later, looking pretty roughed-up but in possession of all the important body parts. Tony was so happy to see them that he got all red-eyed and punched Steve in the stomach, then later claimed sleep deprivation and declared he was putting Dummy on baby-watch between the hours of ten and eight. Natasha and Dad just hugged, like he’d been away on a business trip or something, but the hug lasted a long time._

_They got married that winter. It was a small, private ceremony, nothing like the media circus that had been Pepper and Tony’s wedding, but that was as it should be._

_The baby was born about six months later. Even little Howie could figure out the math on that one, but no one was inclined to judge. Everyone was too excited about Sasha. They called her a miracle, which maybe is one reason she has such a high opinion of herself._

_I worried I was being replaced. I felt feverish and sick, watching them as they brought the baby home, a happy little family unit. I waited for things to change, to be gradually excluded, to be shunted aside like the outsider I obviously was. And then Natasha asked me, “Do you want to hold your sister?” like I was an insider, like I was part of the unit. I said, “Okay, Mom,” and it was like that from then on._

_*_

_I went to college, not because of what they could teach me but because of what I still needed to learn: how to be me, by myself, without a phalanx of protectors. Charlie looked in on me now and then, and I got to know my Bernhardt cousins, but everything Avengers-related kept their distance._

_I studied criminology. My lessons evoked dreams, memories of Sister Elizabeth and Christopher Artemiev and Sloane Fisher and the people like them. To the best of my knowledge, no one had ever tried to track me down, but now I feared that Roeske’s associates – such as Ansel DeGrasse, who had never been accounted for – had just been biding their time. I became convinced that Sasha was as much in danger as I ever had been. I realized that, sooner or later, I was going to have to find those loose ends, and tie them off._

_I graduated. I got another degree, just for fun. I divided my time between the two coasts. I learned everything I could about human trafficking, even taking several trips overseas that I never told my parents about. In Spain I met Inspector Angel Moreno. We married when I was twenty-six._

_When I was twenty-nine I became pregnant with my daughter, Marisol. Learning I was carrying a girl made me nearly frantic; I decorated the entire nursery with origami animals before I understood why. I was still waiting for that long shadow in the night. I was still waiting for the jackboot of my past to drop._

_I located Artemiev. I travelled to Prague and I killed him. He was blind and helpless and a canker on the flesh of mankind. It gave me little pleasure, but a great deal of peace._

_Sasha was angry with me. “I could have done it. Kate and I could have done it,” she insisted, naming her mentor, who’d been a few years ahead of me at the exclusive Chelsea academy._

_“It wasn’t your fight,” I told my sister, “and it wasn’t Kate’s, either. It was mine. And it’s over now.”_

_*_

_But of course it’s never over._

_The world is not the world that existed before the Battle of New York… or after it, for that matter. Things have happened that have changed all of us. SHIELD still keeps its secrets. Enemies still move in the shadows. Time has passed and taken its toll._

_But time has also given back._

_fin  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to my beta, Jamie, who was my second set of eyes. Any mistakes that sneaked through are 'my bad.'
> 
> As with White Blank Page, I took a good deal of creative license in terms of integrating some comics elements into the MCU. I hope they weren't too jarring for comics fans. As I said before, I know just enough to be dangerous.
> 
> Inspiration of one kind or another came from Dean Koontz's novel "False Memory" (regarding phobias and memory manipulation), Orson Scott Card's Ender and Ender's Shadow series (regarding precocious and dangerous children), the TV show Alias (hooray for spy families!) and the movie The Bourne Legacy -- which, honestly, I may have watched too many times.
> 
> Finally, I found while writing that there were elements of the story that I had to cut. This included a minor Tony/Pepper subplot that was (in my opinion) interesting, but interfered with the pace of the narrative, and a couple Clint and Natasha Being Domestic scenes that felt a little, well, gratuitous. I tried to strike a balance, and I look forward to dabbling in this universe in the future.


End file.
